Myanmar · Bago Region
Where to Stay in Bago, Bago Region
Bago is an old royal city of southern Myanmar, once the capital of a Mon kingdom, a town of great golden pagodas and a giant reclining Buddha.
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Where to stay in Bago
The right area depends on your trip — here's what each neighbourhood is best for.
Where you stay in Bago turns on the town or the pagodas. The streets around the centre keep the market, the shrines, and the palace within a walk, and staying downtown suits anyone here for the old city. The gold pagoda towers above.
Bells ring from the shrines. Out toward the great Buddhas and the plain, the town gives way to the temples, the rice fields, and the palm country. A room near the shrines trades the streets for the reclining Buddha, the seated Buddhas, and the quiet green plain.
The rice fields run to the hills. Stay downtown for the market, or out for the shrines. The pagoda road brings you back into the centre in minutes.
About Bago
Bago is the old Mon capital of the south.
What is Bago known for?
On the plain between Yangon and the eastern hills in southern Myanmar, it was long the seat of a great Mon kingdom, and it keeps the towering Shwemawdaw Pagoda that is the tallest in the land, a vast golden reclining Buddha in the town, a rebuilt royal palace of the old kings, and the four great seated Buddhas set back to back nearby. The flat rice plain runs wide. The gold spires catch the sun.
What are the main landmarks in Bago?
The Shwemawdaw Pagoda is the glory of Bago. The great gold stupa rising higher than any other in the land, its spire tipped with jewels above the town, blazes over the plain, the emblem of the city, on the sky. A giant Buddha lies nearby.
The vast reclining Buddha of Shwethalyaung, over fifty metres long, rests in its hall in the town, while the old palace, the four seated Buddhas, and the rice plains mark the country around Bago.
What is the history of Bago?
Bago was the city of a Mon kingdom. Twelve hundred years ago the Mon founded a city on the plain and called it Hanthawaddy, and it grew into the seat of a great kingdom of the south, rich from the sea that once reached its walls. Kings raised golden shrines.
The Mon rulers and the Burmese kings who later took the city built tall pagodas and a vast reclining Buddha, and Bago shone as a royal and holy town, its palace bright with gold. The sea drew away in time. As the rivers silted and the coast moved south, the great port faded and the trade went to Yangon, and Bago sank into a quiet country town among its old shrines.
The pagodas rose again. Earthquakes threw down the great Shwemawdaw more than once, and each time the people built it higher, until it stood as the tallest pagoda in the land, and Bago kept its Buddhas, its palace, and its Mon past on the plain. The gold still crowns the town.
Bago keeps its pagodas and its reclining Buddha on the road to the south.
Where is Bago?
Bago lies in the south of Myanmar, on the flat delta plain northeast of Yangon. The city sits on the Bago river amid a wide land of rice fields and palms, between the great delta to the west and the low Bago hills to the east, on the road to the interior. The rice plain runs flat and green.
Low hills rise to the east.
What is the climate of Bago?
Bago's weather is tropical: hot, and wet for much of the year. Warm weather holds all year on the plain, with a fierce hot season, a heavy monsoon of rain, and a cooler dry spell in the winter. When the monsoon comes, water stands across the rice fields.
The hot season bakes the plain.
How do you get to Bago?
Bago sits on the plain northeast of Yangon in southern Myanmar. Road and rail run to it from the city in a couple of hours, and roads carry on to the hills and the sea. Buses cross the rice plain.
Yangon lies southwest down the road.
More cities in Bago Region
Updated August 2026