Drug Elimination Museum

The drug elimination museum, a brutalist eyesore about the size of Grand Central Station, occupies a weedy lot next to the state-television headquarters in Rangoon, Burma’s most important city. The building is silent and sepulchral, like a cavernous opium den whose patrons have set down their pipes and slipped into nap time. Since 2011, the military-allied government of Burma has softened restrictions on tourism, but hardly anyone seeks out this particular attraction. A mile and a half away is the golden spire of Shwedagon Pagoda, the foremost Buddhist monument in Burma and an architectural, aesthetic, and spiritual must-see. But for fans of irony and unintentional humor, this vast temple of propaganda should be a pilgrimage site in its own right.

Completed in 2001, it features three floors of solemn exhibits about drug abuse and government efforts to stamp it out (and to earn favor as an American ally in the war on drugs). The message would be more effective if anyone actually bothered to visit. The museum barely came to life when I showed up one afternoon, apparently that day’s sole visitor. Half a dozen bored young female employees took turns following me around, switching on the lights seconds before I arrived at an exhibit, and switching them off as I left.