Yangon rewards thin wallets: dozens of pagodas charge nothing, a bowl of mohinga costs less than a bus fare in Bangkok, and the Circular Train circles the whole city for 200 kyat. Sleep in Downtown's 34th Street guesthouse belt and walk almost everywhere.
Rebuilt after 1943 Allied bombing, Botataung is the only stupa in Myanmar you walk inside — a mirrored maze of gold-leaf passages holding a Buddha hair relic. Open 06:00-21:00. Foreigner fee is a modest 6,000 kyat, but the riverside promenade, turtle pond and nat shrines behind it are free.
Yangon holds Southeast Asia's densest surviving colonial streetscape and looking at it costs nothing. Loop the red-brick Secretariat where Aung San was assassinated in 1947, then Pansodan Street's 1920s bank facades, City Hall and the Anglican St Mary's Cathedral.
Yangon's largest Hokkien temple, built 1861-1903 on Strand Road, with camphor-wood pillars, coiled dragon columns and free-burning incense spirals. Open roughly 05:00-21:00, no entry fee, no dress ticket. Nearby Latha lanes hide Sri Devi Hindu shrines and dried-goods alleys.
A 2,000-year-old octagonal stupa marooned in a traffic circle, with the Independence Monument obelisk across the road in Maha Bandula Park. The park is free and fills at dusk with students, chinlone circles and 500-kyat corn vendors under floodlit colonial facades.
Mohinga — catfish-lemongrass noodle soup — is the national breakfast and costs 1,000-2,000 kyat from pavement stools on 19th Street, Latha. Feel Myanmar Food on Pyidhaungsu Yeiktha Road serves a point-and-pick curry buffet with free soup, rice refills and salad from about 3,500 kyat.
Yangon's chaotic wholesale produce market off Bagayar Road, where restaurants buy at dawn and prices are a third of Bogyoke's. Mangosteen, durian, betel-nut bundles and dried shrimp paste sold by the viss. Grazing costs a few hundred kyat per fruit; browsing is free.
The 45.9 km, 39-station loop is the cheapest sightseeing in Asia: 200 kyat for the full circuit on the slow train, about 3 hours, wooden benches, vendors hawking quail eggs and betel through open windows. Buy at Platform 6/7 counter, Bogyoke Aung San Road.
After dark, Latha's 19th Street closes to cars and fills with charcoal grills: skewered okra, quail eggs, pork belly, tofu and morning glory at 300-800 kyat a stick, plus draught Myanmar Beer around 1,000 kyat a glass. Pick raw skewers from ice trays and pay per stick.
The commuter ferry across the Yangon River to Dala township runs every 20 minutes from Pansodan Jetty, taking 10 minutes. Foreigners pay about 4,000 kyat return at the separate counter; the deck view of the working port, monks and bicycle-laden commuters is the real attraction.
A free-to-enter 1896 Sephardic synagogue on 26th Street, one of the last in Myanmar, still tended by a community of around 20 Jews; the caretaker opens the bimah and shows the Torah scrolls on request. Two blocks away sit Surti Sunni Mosque and Hindu temples.
The 130-acre park below Shwedagon's western stairway charges roughly 300 kyat for locals and 3,000 kyat for foreigners, but the fountain lawns give the best full-height, unpaid-angle view of the 99-metre stupa. Open 08:00-18:00 daily.
A 66-metre reclining Buddha under an iron shed on Shwegondaine Road, with glass-mosaic feet mapping 108 auspicious signs, plus the five-storey seated Buddha of Nga Htat Gyi across the street. Both are donation-only, no ticket, open until about 20:00.