The hotel was welcoming and convenient for a small group. Our room was comfortable and we had a good night's sleep prior to our early morning flight. Given the early hour, breakfast was adequate. The Chatrium is a good hotel but nothing special.

It was late when we checked in and above all, we had a problem locating some of our fellow travelers. We were rushing here and there till mid night. The staff coped up with all this and had a nice packed breakfast ready to catch our early flight to Nyaung U. Rooms were very comfortable. Nothing to complain.

Mingalaba!
This is the first word you will hear upon arrival in the country and you will hear, and use, it everywhere, so you might as well learn it right up front. It is a generic greeting – hello, good morning, welcome – and the staff at the Chatrium will say ‘Mingalaba’ to you every time you walk through the door.
As other reviewers have noted, Chatrium is a bit old, but the room we had (#537) was in good condition. It was a good size, included a sofa, and was well-maintained by housekeeping for the 3 nights we were there. We noticed the first day that one of the lamps did not work, but when we mentioned it, the bulb was replaced while we were out, so no problem.
The breakfast buffet was very good – quite extensive with Western and Asian offerings, and even a cappuccino machine. Quite a lot of business was being conducted over breakfast, so this is obviously favored as a business hotel. If you have to check out at 5:00 am, as so many leisure guests do to catch the early morning flight to Bagan, it’s too early for the buffet, but you don’t have to do without breakfast. The hotel provides “breakfast boxes” in the lobby so you can eat your breakfast at the airport in the departure lounge.
We were there in early August and there were no interior renovations going on at that time, so we have none of the noise complaints that others are mentioning for more recent stays. There was some renovation going on around the pool, but we weren’t able to use the pool anyway because of the rainy weather, so those renovations did not affect us at all. It is an elegant-looking pool, so we were sorry the weather didn’t co-operate; we had been looking forward to swimming there.
There were 2 things that were mildly annoying. First, there is no store in the hotel that sells bottled water, so our first order of business after arrival was to go out to a nearby shopping center to buy water. The staff seemed surprised that we didn’t consider the 2 free bottles per day adequate, although they did up it to 3 after we had that discussion. Second, we had a “lake/pagoda view room”, which we had requested, and it did have a view of the gorgeous and nearby Shwedagon Pagoda. However, the door to the small balcony was locked, and there was a note hanging on the doorknob explaining that it was permanently locked to keep insects out. Prevented from stepping out to take good pictures of the pagoda, we were forced to shoot through glass, with less than stellar results. That was disappointing.
On the other hand, there was one other thing that was very good. We arrived with lots of dirty laundry and asked the concierge staff if there was a neighborhood laundry so we could avoid using the expensive hotel laundry service. They knew of one, called for us and our laundry was picked up that day and returned the next. The staff then explained that we had received a very good deal because they had convinced the company to give us express service at standard rates. That was nice of them.
We found the staff we encountered to be fairly good at English – at the concierge desk, the guest relations desk and in the breakfast restaurant and lobby lounge. We had no communication problems at all. Here, as everywhere in the country, the staff were always friendly and very pleasant. Overall, this is a good choice of hotel for Yangon.