Inside, the scene is as breathtaking as it is overwhelming. Out of respect for Buddha, check your shoes and socks at the door.

Your best bet for crowd control is entering on the east side. It's hard to miss the massive, glittering, gold-plated sprawl of stunning temples, stupas, and statues where monks worship, offer flowers, wash statues, and mediate. The Secretariat Office, also known as the Prime Minister's Office, is where General Aung San was assassinated in 1947. Those still standing and worth special note are the former Myanmar Railway Headquarters, the spectacular Immigration Building (once Asia's ritziest department store, Rowe & Co), and the High Court Building built in 1914 in Queen Anne style. Grand structures rest like ghostly relics behind chain-link fences fading into the hazy, humid landscape. It's a beautiful, fragile sight of baroque and beaux arts buildings constructed between 1900-1920. Behold the majestic, crumbling buildings in various states of glorious decay, faded and peeling like old family photographs. Burma is a time capsule of British colonial treasures, the most you will find in Southeast Asia. Here's what else I saw in this magical city. Dousing cool water on people is a gesture of good luck.

If you happen to be here at this most fortuitous time of the year, you'll probably get splashed. It's believed that water washes away any past misdeeds and provides spiritual renewal, the turning of a new page. YANGON, Myanmar – Last April, at the end of the sultry, dry season, I spent a few days in Yangon, Myanmar, on a Hong Kong-Myanmar-Hong Kong jag that fell on the cusp of the Myanmar Water Festival, which ushers in the new year.

Kate Donnelly gets the lay of the land in Myanmar, which is once again welcoming Western visitors. After years of turmoil, Yangon is blossoming into a city of grand architecture, two-thousand-year-old gilded pagodas, and eclectic street food.

Isoul harris