HAPA, where it’s ‘HAPA’ning in Yangon

Located inside the Turquoise Mountain-restored 491-501 Merchant Street building—a project that saw the training of hundreds of trade professionals in traditional building skills—HAPA is where you’ll find one of Yangon’s cosiest and most forward-thinking public houses.

The exterior of the Turquoise Mountain-restored building

Accommodating a maximum of 12 guests at any one time, let us start by saying that this is a space created by people-people, for people-people. Communality is at the heart of this cold brew café-cum-cocktail bar’s makeup, and it’s not the kind of place you’ll come to spread out, put your headphones on and zone out with your laptop. You can try, but during busy periods, it’s likely you’ll be left feeling very ‘arr nar deh’, or a little bit awkward.

HAPA, Yangon’s narrowest public house

HAPA, a space to be enjoyed with family and friends, not a laptop

The people person behind the business is Ma Su Mon Oo, an ambitious entrepreneur, whose experience prior to HAPA included managing a luxury river cruise and an internationally renowned destination management company. Having pushed the boat out—quite literally—on some of Myanmar’s most difficult to navigate rivers, Ma Su Mon’s now looking to take on the smaller, yet equally ambitious challenge of bringing to life one of Yangon’s narrowest and most difficult to utilise commercial spaces.

HAPA’s Ma Su Mon and the talented mixologist, Joe

Not content with run-of-the-mill ideas, inside you’ll find perfectly imperfect cocktail glasses (all sourced from Yangon’s Nagar Glass factory), paintings from 19th century Burmese tattoo manuscripts—including a man-eating tiger and sword-wielding angel—and perhaps most interesting of all, a pay-as-you-feel money box. Whether or not the psychology of this trust-based concept is going to succeed is yet to be seen, but in a country that’s renowned for its goodwill, honesty and love of making merit, surely it stands a very good chance of working.

Cocktail glasses sourced from Yangon’s Nagar glass factory

A man-eating tiger (can you spot the man running in the tiger’s eyes?)

Joining Ma Su from the aforementioned luxury river cruise is U Kyaw Min Swe, an accomplished cocktail mixologist who, for ease of pronunciation, also goes by the name, Joe. When it comes to the shaking and stirring of cocktails, he’s one of the best in the business—certainly in our experience—and the espresso martinis and gin gimlets he conjured up on the night were exquisite. Cocktails aside, he’s also the man in charge of dispensing the limited batch, speciality cold brew coffee – at the time of writing, HAPA stocked five varieties: Original Black, Original Black (Extra Strong), Latte, Hawaiian and Vietnamese. Just to clarify, there are no set prices for these either – literally everything you see (that’s edible or drinkable) is purchasable on a pay-as-you-feel basis.

U Kyaw Min Swe

Hapa’s eye-catching cold brew coffee bottles

At Tour Mandalay, we’re big believers in supporting businesses like HAPA that are locally-owned, independent and grassroots in nature. The intimacy and attentive service you’ll enjoy whilst frequenting is an added bonus, as is the flexibility of the pay-as-you-feel approach, the heritage location and the thoughtful adaptation of rare Myanmar artwork.

It might be a small space, but it more than makes up for that with A* cocktails, cold brew coffee and a huge heart.

Alongside the likes of The Secretariat, Yuwaddy Centre, Doh Eain’s Alley Garden Project and the Old Burma Tourist building, HAPA is a recommended stop on our ‘Rangoon Revisited’ tour – for an up-to-date taste of Yangon, formerly Rangoon, we’d highly recommend incorporating this into your Myanmar touring arrangements.