City buses
❃ City buses
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ကားမှတ်တိုင်ဘယ်မှာလဲ
[ Ka hmat taing be hma le? ] -
Where is the bus stop?
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ဆူးလေကိုဒီကားရောက်လား
[ Sule go di ka yauk la? ] -
Does this bus go to Sule?
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ဘူတာကြီးကိုဘယ်ကားသွားလဲ
[ Bu da gyi go be ka thwa le? ] -
Which bus goes to the railway station?
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သုံးဆယ့်ခြောက်ကား
[ Thone ze chauk ka ] -
Bus number 36.
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ကားခဘယ်လောက်လဲ
[ Ka ga be lauk le? ] -
How much is the bus fare?
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အကြွေလိုလား
[ A kyway lo la? ] -
Do I need exact change?
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ရောက်ရင်ပြောပြပါ
[ Yauk yin pyaw pya ba ] -
Please tell me when we arrive.
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ရောက်ပြီလား
[ Yauk bi la? ] -
Have we reached there yet?
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ရှေ့မှတ်တိုင်ဆင်းမယ်
[ Shay hmat taing sin me ] -
Next stop, please.
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ဆင်းချင်တယ်
[ Sin chin de ] -
I want to get off.
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ဒီခုံလူရှိလား
[ Di khon lu shi la? ] -
Is this seat taken?
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အနောက်ကိုတိုးပေးပါ
[ A nauk ko toe pay ba ] -
Please move to the back.
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လူအရမ်းကျပ်တယ်
[ Lu a yan kyat de ] -
It is very crowded.
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ကားလာနေပြီ
[ Ka la ne bi ] -
The bus is coming.
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ခြေလှမ်းသတိထားပါ
[ Che hlan tha di hta ba ] -
Mind your step.
Riding the Yangon Bus Service (YBS) is one of the most authentic and immersive ways to experience the daily pulse of Myanmar's largest city. Completely revamped in recent years, the YBS network is extensive and incredibly cheap, but it operates on a strict exact-change system. When you board the bus through the front door, you must drop your fare—usually 200 or 300 kyats—directly into a transparent plastic box located right next to the driver. The driver does not handle money or give change, so asking the phrase အကြွေလိုလား (a kyway lo la?) [ʔə tɕwè lò lá], meaning "Do I need exact change?", is highly relevant to prepare your coins before boarding. Because bus routes can be slightly confusing for foreigners and digital transit maps are not always perfectly accurate, asking locals at the bus stop is essential. You can point at an arriving bus and ask ဆူးလေကိုဒီကားရောက်လား (Sule go di ka yauk la?) [sʰúlè ɡò dì ká jaʊʔ lá], which translates to "Does this bus go to Sule Pagoda?". Inside, the buses are often heavily crowded, sometimes freezing cold from the blasting air conditioning, and usually filled with Burmese pop music. Cultural etiquette on the bus is deeply respected; offering your seat to Buddhist monks, pregnant women, or the elderly is practically a mandatory social rule. When your destination approaches, you move towards the back door and loudly say ရှေ့မှတ်တိုင်ဆင်းမယ် (shay hmat taing sin me) [ʃḛ m̥aʔ taɪɴ sʰɪ́ɴ mɛ̀], meaning "I will get off at the next stop". Riding the YBS is a minor adventure in itself, providing a fantastic opportunity to observe the everyday kindness, resilience, and vibrant interactions of Yangon's local residents.
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