Old Burma Clubs 2 – The Maymyo Club, Maymyo

After the searing heat of Rangoon yesterday, up into the hills to the resort of Maymyo for a visit to the Maymyo Club. Maymyo is now called Pyin U Lwin officially and is in the Shan Highlands about 40 miles from Mandalay. In the 1890s the British started developing what had been a military post in the Shans into a hill resort similar to those being developed across the Empire, particularly in India with Snooty Ooty, Simla etc as well as in the Cameron Highlands in Malaysia, Kuling and Mogonshan in China etc (for a good history of hill resorts in Asia see Barbara Crossette’s The Great Hill Stations of Asia while for Mogonshan I’d better get a plug for Mark Kitto’s China Cuckoo). As with Simla in India, in the sweltering summer much of the British administration would relocate to Maymyo. Of course they needed their club and built one that wouldn’t look out of place in Sussex or Surrey.