Bagan or Yangon?

Neither city is a place to swim, so a pool at your hotel is the answer in both. In Bagan the Irrawaddy is for sunset boat trips, not bathing.

From Yangon the Bay of Bengal beaches at Chaung Tha and Ngwe Saung can at least be reached, but only as a separate trip of several nights, not as an outing.

Yangon is the far better place to eat. Its tea shops, street stalls across the downtown grid, Burmese noodle dishes and the Indian and Chinese quarters, with dosa, dim sum and evening barbecue on 19th Street, give you something new at every meal.

Bagan has good Burmese curry spreads, tea-leaf salad and local palm sugar sweets, but its restaurants are scattered and many serve the same tourist menu. Neither city has much in the way of refined dining.

For sightseeing, Bagan is clearly the stronger of the two. Yangon has one monument of world rank in the Shwedagon, but Bagan has a whole plain of them, and the pleasure is in how far it goes on. Several days of riding between monuments still leave much of it unseen, and the Archaeological Museum explains what you are looking at. The 2016 earthquake and some heavy-handed restoration have left their mark, but they take little away from the whole.

Yangon has more kinds of sight but fewer of each. Besides the Shwedagon at dusk, there are the reclining Buddha at Chaukhtatgyi and the mirrored interior of Botataung. The leaning colonial blocks of the Secretariat, the High Court and the Strand also add a later layer of history that Bagan does not have. Its museums are modest, though, and once you have seen the pagodas and the old downtown, there is little left to keep you.

Yangon at least has evenings to go out in: beer stations showing football, crowded tables on 19th Street in Chinatown, rooftop hotel bars and a few small clubs, although it still goes quiet before midnight. Bagan has almost nothing after dinner, because everyone is up before dawn for the temples, and the town is asleep by ten.

Bagan offers more time outdoors, even though its plain of scrub and peanut fields is flat and dry. Riding between temples, drifting over them in a balloon and taking a sunset boat on the Irrawaddy are memorable, and Mount Popa adds forest walks within reach.

Yangon's outdoors is mostly its own parks. You can walk the Kandawgyi boardwalk, stroll by Inya Lake or take a ferry onto the delta, but there are no hills or trails nearby, and the monsoon cuts down outdoor time for half the year.

Yangon has the better choice of outings. Bago, a former royal capital with the Shwemawdaw Pagoda and the Shwethalyaung reclining Buddha, can be reached by road or train, and the ferry to Twante's pottery kilns and the island pagoda at Kyauktan are closer still.

From Bagan, the climb to Taung Kalat on Mount Popa is the one classic outing. The teak monastery at Salay and the market town of Pakokku come after that, and then the options run out.

Both are hard work with children, and the difference is in the kind of experience. Bagan offers adventure for older children, with horse carts, bikes and possibly a balloon, but it has long dusty distances and basic medical care.

Yangon has a zoo, a small amusement park and lawns in People's Park, and better facilities if something goes wrong. The price is broken pavements and chaotic traffic.

Yangon is easier to get around. The colonial downtown can be walked, uneven pavements and all, and cheap taxis and ride-hailing cover the rest, slowed only by traffic. The Circular Railway is worth riding as an outing in its own right.

In Bagan, Nyaung U, Old Bagan and New Bagan lie several kilometres apart with no public transport. Most visitors hire an electric scooter, which is fun but can be awkward on the sandy tracks.

Yangon has more to buy, nearly all of it under one roof at Bogyoke Aung San Market. Its stalls sell jade, rubies, puppets, longyi and lacquerware from Bagan, and Chinatown and the Indian quarter add markets for spices and everyday goods.

Bagan is the place to see lacquerware made, in the workshops of Myinkaba and New Bagan. Apart from that, it has little more than sand paintings and Nyaung U market.

Both are cheap places to travel, and simple guesthouses and tea-shop breakfasts cost very little in either. The extra costs differ. In Bagan they are the archaeological zone fee and the dawn balloon flights, both easy to budget for.

In Yangon the larger cost is a comfortable hotel, which costs more than everything else suggests, while most pagodas apart from the Shwedagon cost little or nothing.

The stage offer is much the same in both: marionette shows and traditional dance performed over dinner for visitors, and no theatre or concert scene. Yangon stages its shows at the barge-shaped Karaweik Palace on Kandawgyi Lake. In Bagan, the Ananda Temple festival gives you a better chance of catching an all-night zat pwe.

Yangon has the more distinctive option. At meditation centres such as Mahasi, visitors can join vipassana practice for days or weeks, and Burmese massage is easy to find, though the city around you stays loud and congested.

Bagan is calmer in itself. Afternoons are spent resting by the pools and gardens of the riverside resorts in Old and New Bagan, and evenings watching the light fade over the plain, with only dust and touts at the busiest temples to disturb you.