A message for you

Dear Guest,

Kindly be informed that all the telephone lines will be cutting off starting from 10:30am to 3:00pm today due to the governments need for checking all the underground telephone lines, should you need to make any urgent call, please, contact to the reception, we regret for any inconvience cause.

Thank you so much for your kind understanding.

The management of .. hotel.

Global brands

The locals mainly do not know the global brands. I offered one colleague of mine Tik Tak and he has never seen it before. Another colleague was telling us, all excited, that he learnt from his friend in Thailand about coffee brands – like cappuccino (well, close). So that is fairly intriguing…

Make-up

Girls were special „make-up“ that is traditional and probably is both for decoration and sun protection. They use this special powder that has yellowish colour and they make different shapes, usually big circles on their cheeks with it; sometimes they paint on their noses, chins or foreheads too.

Home cinema...

In the evening, there are few open "cafes", they have those tiny children chairs for their guests to use. The owner will have a TV on with evening programme and you will get to watch with tens of others the TV. Something like a home cinema shared with all the neighbours.

To get a business...

Some of the marketing that hotels do are as follows. You are working in your foreign company / NGO and suddenly there is a door bell ringing. Once you open a high number of people marches in. In our case they were nine. They walk through the office, smile on everyone and go to the central area of the office. They are hotel representatives – they give you their business cards that hold titles such as assistant director, associate director, managing director, head director, Japanese director etc., they give you a fancy cake and request if you could accommodate your expats in their hotel. Strangely enough they do not come with a cheaper price offer thus you do not even think of changing the hotel where you (as an expat) live already, ... then they leave the office with smiles on, you eat the cake and the day goes on. And you wait for them to come next month again...

Housing

A foreigner cannot rent a house without the house owner getting a special permission. As getting the permission is quite a hassle, as well as the owner must keep track about you, staying in a rented house / apartment is not really an option. Many thus rent rooms in hotels or guest houses.

Communication means

The communication is fairly difficult. The international mobile operators do not work here, there is only one mobile operator and it is necessary to buy their sim card in order to use your cell phone. Unfortunately the sim card costs usd 2500, so many people tend to rent a phone. I understood that certain people know how to „clone“ the card, so more users can use one. Thus sometimes you get accidentally phone calls that are meant for someone else.

There is only one internet provider, when that stops working, there is no internet in the whole country.

Fuel

There are restrictions on fuel. Each driver is entitled to 6 galons of fuel for three days. Taxi drivers thus use the gas cillinder to run their cars and they sell their fuel for high prices at the black markets to any one who needs it.

Cars

There are not that many cars running on the streets in Y and if so, they are rather old and falling apart. As I understood, it is very expensive to own a car. New car can be bought from some 350 000 usd, the old ones will cost around 30 000 usd. There are tuk tuks running, motos, bikes with sidecars and sort of pickups that serve as buses. And the streets in the capital are fairly good.

Pagodas

MM is a Buddhist country thus there are golden pagodas to be found in many places. The Pagodas are rising above the city and give out “golden glitter” to the surrounding air as the night comes by. One of the most beautiful ones is Shwedagon pagoda. We had a view of it from our hotel, unfortunately I did not have time to go and see it.

The city

I did not get a chance to see the poorest areas of the city. Most of the buildings in the richer quarters as well as in the center were old British colonial houses. Some repaired, some falling apart, but each and every one had this special air around it. One would give anything to see how the city used to look. There are no skyscrapers, no „branded“ coffee shops or fast food restaurants. Center is a mix of small houses, little businesses, food markets and stalls. There are not that many people in the streets, although the population of MM is fairly high.

The first feelings...

I arrived to Y in the morning. As I was landing I saw many little sheds cramped around the airport. It was very likely one of the poor areas of the city. To my surprise though, the drive from the airport to the city was going through streets that were green and very clean. The grass was cut, many times flower beds were arranged in the middle or around the streets. Another interesting part was that few meters away from the street there were wall or fences that divided the street from the living areas. The people that were passing by were dressed either traditionally (something like lungi – long skirts) or in western clothes and there were no beggars to be seen. Somehow this city breathed of “positive poverty” - the green, the tidiness, no extreme poverty to be seen – the city was really giving some hope. I did not expect this.