Mawlamyine

The Mon have lived around the mouth of the Thanlwin for many centuries, and the old kingdom centred on Thaton, north of the city, was conquered by Anawrahta of Bagan in 1057. Mawlamyine itself was a modest settlement until the First Anglo-Burmese War of 1824–26, when the Treaty of Yandabo gave Britain the Tenasserim coast. The British laid out a new port on the east bank, called it Moulmein, and made it the capital of British Burma from 1826 until Rangoon took the role after the second war of 1852.

Those decades built the town that survives. Teak floated down the Thanlwin from the interior to sawmills on the waterfront, rice and later rubber followed, and the port drew Mon, Bamar, Karen, Chinese, Indian and Anglo-Burmese families whose mosques, temples and churches still stand a few streets apart. The American missionary Adoniram Judson built the country's first Baptist church here in 1827. Two English writers are tied to the place: the pagoda on the ridge is thought to be the 'old Moulmein pagoda' with which Kipling opens 'Mandalay', and George Orwell was posted to the town as a police officer in 1926, the setting of his essay 'Shooting an Elephant', his mother's family having come from here.

The Second World War brought Japanese occupation, and the Thailand–Burma railway was built inland from Thanbyuzayat, south of the city, at enormous cost in lives. After independence in 1948 the surrounding countryside was contested by Karen and Mon insurgents for decades. Mawlamyine became the capital of Mon State when the state was created in 1974, and remains the fourth-largest city in Myanmar, though the port's importance faded long ago and many of its young people now work in Thailand.

Mawlamyine is the cultural capital of the Mon, one of the oldest recorded peoples of mainland Southeast Asia, whose script was the model for written Burmese and whose language is still spoken in the villages around the estuary. Mon National Day, the hamsa bird of Mon heraldry and a strong sense of a separate, older civilisation are part of everyday identity here, alongside the Burmese mainstream. Karen communities, many of them Christian, live in and around the city as well.

Buddhism shapes the year. The ridge of pagodas above the town fills at full moon, novices are ordained in processions of music and finery, and the lights of Thadingyut in October mark the end of the rains retreat, when families visit their elders. Thingyan, the new year water festival in April, is the loudest week of the year. Mon pagoda festivals add their own music, boxing and dance, and village crafts on Bilu Kyun — blackboards, wooden pipes, rubber bands, cane goods — are a source of local pride.

The colonial inheritance is unusually visible: brick warehouses and shuttered timber shophouses, a clock tower, mission churches and schools, and a mixture of faiths in a few blocks. Manners are those of Myanmar generally — quiet speech, deference to age and to monks, modest dress, shoes removed at thresholds — and conversation about politics is something residents must be careful with.

Mawlamyine is the fourth-largest city in Myanmar and by far the biggest in the southeast. The estuary sets the rhythm: fishing boats and ferries cross to the island, the fish and prawns come to the market before dawn, and the working day starts early and pauses in the heat of the afternoon. Rubber from the plantations inland, rice, fruit from the Mon orchards, fishing and small trade make up most of the local economy, along with government offices, the university and the hospital.

Most people live in low houses of brick, timber and corrugated iron spread back from the waterfront and along the roads south and east, with monasteries at the centre of many wards. Remittances matter enormously: hundreds of thousands of Mon and Karen from this part of the country work in Thailand, and money sent home supports whole families and pays for building.

Since the 2021 coup the country's crisis has reached everyday life here as elsewhere — power cuts, fuel queues, rising prices, restricted internet, checkpoints and the fear of conscription — while fighting in the neighbouring states has displaced large numbers of people and cut road links. Schools and markets keep going, but households live with uncertainty and with families split between the town and work abroad.

Mawlamyine has a reputation across Myanmar for eating well, and the reason is the estuary. River and sea fish, prawns and crab reach the market daily, and the kitchens of the town turn them into sour curries with tamarind or roselle leaf, fish grilled over charcoal, and soups thickened with the pungent fermented shrimp and fish paste called ngapi, which is made in quantity along this coast. Dried fish and dried prawns hang in the market stalls and travel inland.

Mon cooking is the local accent: rice served with several small dishes, raw vegetables and a chilli-and-ngapi dip, sour and herbal flavours rather than rich ones, and coconut milk in both curries and sweets. Mohinga, the fish and rice noodle soup eaten at breakfast across the country, is a natural dish in a river city, and noodle bowls dressed with tamarind, garlic oil and coriander are sold from stalls all day. Tea-leaf salad, lahpet thoke, appears on almost every table.

Mon State is orchard country, and in the rains the market fills with durian, mangosteen, rambutan, jackfruit and pomelo. Sweets lean on sticky rice, palm sugar and coconut, and the juice of the toddy palm is drunk fresh or fermented in the villages. The teashop provides the rest of the day's meals: strong tea with condensed milk, fried dough sticks, steamed buns and small plates shared at low tables from early morning until dark.