Mrauk U

Arakan had royal cities long before Mrauk U. Dhanyawadi and then Waithali, both within a short distance to the north, were Buddhist and Hindu centres trading across the Bay of Bengal, and Rakhine tradition holds that the Mahamuni Buddha image was cast at Dhanyawadi. The later capital at Launggyet gave way in 1430, when King Min Saw Mon returned from exile in Bengal, with Bengali help, and founded a new city on a defensible site among creeks and hills.

The Mrauk U kingdom that followed lasted three and a half centuries and was one of the richest states on the bay. Its kings took Muslim titles alongside Buddhist ones, struck coins in Persian script, ruled Chittagong for a time and dealt with Portuguese adventurers and Dutch merchants; the Dutch East India Company kept a factory here from about 1610, and the city's moats and canals earned it a comparison with Venice. Rice, slaves and forest goods paid for the temples, which were built of sandstone with thick walls, narrow passages and platforms that could be defended.

Decline came through the 18th century, and in 1784 the Konbaung king Bodawpaya conquered Arakan, carried the Mahamuni image to his capital near Mandalay and ended the kingdom. Britain took Arakan in 1826 and moved the administration to the coast at Akyab, now Sittwe, leaving Mrauk U a country town among its monuments. Excavation and restoration work has continued in recent decades, and in 2017 an international commission urged Myanmar to nominate Mrauk U for UNESCO World Heritage status, though conflict has repeatedly interrupted the process. The site is not inscribed.

Mrauk U is the emotional centre of Rakhine identity. The people here speak Rakhine, a language very close to Burmese and often described as a dialect of it, and the memory of the kingdom that ruled from this valley is a living part of how they see themselves. The loss of the Mahamuni image to the Burmese court in 1784 is still spoken of.

Religious life follows the Theravada Buddhist calendar shared with the rest of the country: alms rounds at dawn, novice ordinations with music and procession, the water festival of Thingyan in April, and the lamps of Thadingyut and Tazaungdaing at the end of the rains. The old temples are used for worship, and villagers gild images and leave offerings in chambers carved five centuries ago. Kyin wrestling, a traditional Rakhine sport, is part of festival days.

The valley is not only Rakhine. Chin villages lie up the Lemro river, where older women of some groups wear facial tattoos, a custom that has died out among younger generations; Kaman Muslims and other communities have long lived in the state as well, and relations between communities have been deeply scarred by the violence of the past fifteen years. Visitors are expected to dress modestly, to remove shoes at temple platforms and to avoid political conversation, which can be dangerous for the person answering.

A few tens of thousands of people live in the town itself, with many more in the villages of the township around it, and life is agricultural: rice in the fields between the temples, vegetables, fish from the creeks and the two rivers, bullock carts and motorcycles on the tracks. The market opens before dawn, the day empties in the afternoon heat, and cattle graze among stupas that have stood for four or five hundred years.

Mrauk U has never been rich. Roads are poor, and a township hospital and a high school serve a wide rural area. Before 2021 a small tourism economy gave work to guesthouse staff, guides, boat crews and drivers, and its disappearance removed most of the cash income of the town.

The renewed war in Rakhine since 2023 has been the largest fact of local life. Blockades have made rice, fuel and medicine scarce and expensive, telephone and internet connections have been cut for long stretches, fighting has damaged buildings in and around the town and displaced people across the state, and families have been separated by the closure of roads and rivers. Aid access is limited and the archaeological site has been affected by the fighting.

Rakhine cooking is the hottest in Myanmar and the most closely tied to fish. In Mrauk U that means river fish rather than sea fish — curries and sour soups made with tamarind, roselle leaf or green mango, seasoned with fresh and dried chilli and with ngapi, the fermented fish and shrimp paste that flavours nearly everything. Rice is served with several small dishes at once, along with a plate of raw vegetables and a chilli dip.

The dish that has travelled furthest is Rakhine mont di, round rice vermicelli served in or dressed with a light fish broth with chilli, lemongrass, fried garlic and coriander, eaten for breakfast and sold from stalls in the morning market. Salads of shredded vegetables or green mango with dried shrimp, fish-paste relishes and fried river fish fill out the everyday table, and freshwater prawns and crab appear when the catch allows.

The market supplies the rest: jackfruit, mangoes and bananas in season, sticky-rice snacks with palm sugar and coconut, and pickled tea leaves for lahpet thoke, the tea-leaf salad eaten across the country. Toddy palm juice is drunk fresh or fermented in the villages, and teashops serve strong tea with condensed milk from early morning, the setting for most of the town's conversation.