Hsipaw

A small Shan State town on the Dokhtawady River in northern Myanmar, Hsipaw is most commonly visited as a trekking base for walks through Shan and Palaung hill-tribe villages in the surrounding uplands. The town itself is the former seat of the Hsipaw Shan Saohpa and still contains the early twentieth-century Shan palace, known locally as the East Haw, associated with a story of political disappearance during the Ne Win government. The Gokteik Viaduct, a remarkable British colonial-era railway bridge spanning a gorge between Hsipaw and Pyin Oo Lwin, is one of the engineering landmarks of Myanmar.