Renaissance city Yangon

NOT to put too fine a point on it, but Yangon is a city that, on paper at least, should not work. It's dusty. Cars, dirt tracks and exhaust fumes throw a fine layer of ashy grey over everything. The roads are potholed and clogged with traffic jams. The noise is a constant assault - packed little public buses with no air-conditioning vie with ancient, spluttering cars. Every so often, someone leans casually out of the window and spits out a lurid stream stained red by betel-nut. The infrastructure is antiquated. The city's 15 power stations cannot keep up with the demand, so blackouts are common.

And yet...

There is something else, just below the surface, a steely resilience beneath the fine-boned posture of the gently smiling Myanmar. The word, incidentally, describes the country, the people and the language. There is an abso…