Three small beds where Aung San Suu Kyi and her two older brothers slept are in an airy upstairs room and the ornamental pond where the younger boy drowned at the age of eight is down a grassy slope in the lush garden.
It is Aye Aye's first visit to the house and she is obviously affected by the poignant atmosphere, her lively comments fading to a whisper, then silence, as our bare feet pad over the teak floor.
Outside, in the streets of Yangon, the atmosphere is vibrant and full of hope now that the long years of military dictatorship are over. People are poor. They sit on boxes or low plastic chairs, dressed in their cotton longyi (sarongs), selling fruit, betel nuts, tissues.
The city itself looks like a decaying backwater, in spite of the 4.5 million population. The grand colonial buildings near the river sprout jungle plants from crannies; greenish-black mould spills down crumbling walls. The city streets have deep potholes and footpaths are missing paving stones. At night there are constant power outages and a deep blackness descends.
Glowing above the sagging powerlines and rubble-strewn streets of the city is the Shwedagon Pagoda, its gilded curves rosy in the light of the setting sun. A shrine for eight hairs from the head of Gautama Buddha, it dominates the Yangon skyline.
Austere, it is not: the 5ha marble platform teems with temples, shrines, statues of nats (spirits) and astrological animals. Everyone is dressed in their best, the women with a creamy sweep of thanaka on their cheeks, the fragrant paste made from the ground bark of the thanaka tree, used as sunscreen and cosmetic.
Even in this contemplative place it is hard to escape politics, for the Shwedagon Pagoda has been the site of two of the most dramatic events in Myanmar's history: General Aung San's speech from the steps in 1946, demanding independence from the British, and his daughter's speech in 1988 when she addressed a huge crowd, calling that uprising the second struggle for independence.
After a few days in Yangon, I fly 700km north to the plains of the dry zone, to Old Bagan on a bend in the Irrawaddy River. It was the capital of the medieval Buddhist kingdom and, although the city itself is long gone, the antique atmosphere remains. Peasant farmers push wooden ploughs behind humped white oxen among ruins of ancient glories.
Over two thousand temples and pagodas dating from the 11th to the 13th centuries are studded about the plain.
Some are ruins, some restored, often in a historically inaccurate way, as it is both a stunning archeological treasure and a living Buddhist site.
A 40-minute flight east from Bagan, on the high plateau of Shan State, lies Inle Lake. Cutting through placid dark blue waters in a long-tail canoe, you pass by houses on slender stilts and floating gardens.
The gardens, woven reed mats topped by soil and tethered to bamboo poles thrust into the lake floor, are bursting with tomatoes, beans and aubergines. Gliding between the rows are the fishermen-farmers who live on the lake.
They propel small skiffs standing on one leg in the stern, the other curled about a single oar.
In a three-storey wooden building, shutters flung wide to catch the lake-cooled air, women weave exquisite silk longyi in jewel colours, their bare feet vigorously working the bamboo treadles. One draws silk fibre from the stems of lotus flowers, to be woven into robes for images of Buddha.
Even here The Lady is never far away: the fighting-peacock flag of her National League for Democracy is pinned to one wall.
