How The Mighty Have Fallen - Pegu Club

Eric:
I set out this morning with no particular destination in mind, just headed in a direction from the hotel I hadn't walked yet.  Hat, sunscreen, mosquito repellant, cash?  Yep.  Umbrella?  Um... Needless to say, a half mile or so into my walk, the skies opened.  By the time I found shelter under the awning of a street stall I was so wet I needn't have bothered. 

While I waited for the downpour to lessen, I recognized from some previous web browsing, that behind the wall supporting my temporary shelter was the legendary Pegu Club.  The "gentlemen's club", was once a proud symbol of British imperialism in Southeast Asia and everything it stood for.  Rudyard Kipling was reportedly inspired to write Road to Mandalay during a visit to the Pegu Club.  Membership was open to "all gentlemen interested in general society" according to club rules.  Of course, they really meant "white gentlemen". Today, the property stands derelict, home to stray dogs, some chickens, geese, and what appear to be a couple of families of squatters.  As I was weighing the pros and cons of trespassing for the sake of a photo or two, a teenaged boy slogged through the rain from inside the compound, and seeing me standing there said hello, and held the gate for me.  Surely that's the equivalent of a club membership, so in I went! 

Considering the harsh climate, the building is reasonably intact, though if there is going to be any effort to preserve/restore the site, it better happen soon. 

 I didn't have the nerve to try the stairs.

A ballroom perhaps? 

Nice laundry room.

The club's newest member. 

In doing a bit more reading about the club since my visit, I've also discovered that writer Paul Theroux was turned away from the club in 1971 [by that time, being run as an officers' mess by the military government] and wrote about it in The Great Railway Bazar.   

Somewhat ironically, this onetime symbol of the excesses of imperialism stands immediately across the street from the Russian Embassy.  Now a bit of an anachronism itself.