High bloodpressure ??

Something that makes me laugh here ever so often is how easy Myanmar feel sick. Whenever they have a slight headache, they go to the doctor. An upset tummy gets you a week's worth of medicine, and a small scratch or scrape needs to be attended to by the school nurse.

Admittedly, my reference pool is based mostly on school experience (students and teachers) and my home base of course. Here, the nurse is always taking everybody's blood pressure. For the simplest of reasons. When we have the flu going around, let's measure your blood pressure, slight headache... measure.. At one point last year I saw several of our office staff using the blood pressure thing on each other since they felt slightly queasy.

I find that soo funny. Of course, there are plenty of occasions  when more professional advice is needed, but not at the slightest 'I feel less good than normal'.

Today again. A fellow teacher was filling her cup at the watercooler. She told me she needed to take medicine. I asked her what the matter was. Upset tummy... What happened to good-old-'let's wait a day or to to see if I'm really sick?'. Maybe I'm just not culturally adjusted in this way.. 

Back on schedule

Unfortunately a  schedule that I'd rather not be on... the electricity-schedule...   We were warned in early April that it might happen but I hate it when it does happen...  We have the following rotation... 1 day we have power for most of the day, and it goes off in the night at around 11 pm. Power comes back on the following morning at about 6am. That evening at around 6 pm the power goes off again till 11pm (we h ad that last night), today we have power (I hope) and a 'normal' day and tomorrow we start again with a whole day no power, power  back on at around 6 pm, the next day it'll be a night, followed by an evening...

Luckily it didn't happen during the incredibly hot summer months, but still it is very annoying. The night is actually the easiest at the moment since temperatures have dropped considerably (from around 40 degrees Celsius to around 30) and we have bought one of those rechargeable table fans. At the time it was the last one and it really has been a very good investment. We're considering expanding our collection of those useful objects....

I do hope I'm correct on the 'we-have-power-today' since I have to bake brownies, baby teething biscuits and make pasta for dinner.

My favorite restaurant in Yangon

Posting on going out triggered this post. Last month, instead of going out with my colleagues we had a family dinner at this restaurant.

Xenne loves it because he has space to run around  and eat spaghetti (he ALWAYS chooses this), we love it because of its nice surroundings, good food, and very good prices...

The place is called HAPPY NOODLES and is just off Inya Road. They moved about a year ago to this location and I for one, think the place has gotten even better..

The pictures are just from the garden. The house is beautiful as well (colonial style) but I didn't get a chance for a picture since Xenne got his hands on the camera.

I love the different styles of noodles from the within Myanmar. I used to eat the same one since I liked it so much but lately I venture out a bit and each and every one I try (in the vegetarian version) I enjoy very much. Definitely worth going to if you ever happen to be in Yangon.

Going out tonight

Every last Friday of the month we teachers usually go out. Tonight we will go again. This time I'll join. It has been a fair few months since I had energy enough to do so. Having young kids at home is not often a stimulus for late nights out....  And there were always things to do, like moving house, someone sick, full house with guests....  Not tonight. Tonight I'll go out as well and check whether the 'Yangon scene' has changed over the last few months....  (the last time I had a night you can decently call 'late'  was January 2011!).

We go to the staple-of-staples for this kind of thing.. Friendship which is a bar/restaurant on the corner of Inya Road and Shwegondain. In days of old, this was one of the few places where you could go without being stared at as a westerner and still get a good deal on the beer (the other places being expat hangouts like hotel bars).

I do know that things have changed beyond that already (the last time there were quite a few foreign/western faces in friendship. The Winner Inn, Savoy Hotel, and Guest Care are all within walking distance, and hotels are bordering on full lately). I think we go this time because of its convenient location and we know everyone can find it after they have done their tuition 'duty' (all myanmar staff give tuition and homework lessons as a way to prop up salaries).

Hopefully I can persuade some colleagues to go dancing later, Probably in the Sedona since that is one of the best places for dancing still. Though new places are coming up. Maybe it is time to check some out. I just don't want to spend my evening between groups of late teens and early-twenties...

Every Monday I get the newspaper (Myanmar Times English version) and some of the articles really do surprise me even after so many years here.

Yesterday I read that the employees of a couple of factories were on strike. They want more money (as is usual when there are strikes), but I could see the validity of their claims. OK, I haven't contacted anyone to hear the other side of the story but I can well imagine that (most of the ) facts were true.

The workers of one of the factories got salaries up to 50.000 ks a month (roughly $50). It was made up of 500 ks daily wage (can you imagine working a day for $0.50!), and then with a complex system of bonuses for overtime and so on, they could manage to get the $50. It means working every day from 8 am to 8 pm, and I mean EVERY day. So no weekends and so on.. If you want a day off or are sick, they cut your salary....

The owner didn't want to agree to the demands but wanted to give half of what was asked for (15.000 instead of 30.000), claiming that since there were so many employees, it was unaffordable... (over 1500 employees in a garment factory!).

How can this be possible in our day and time? People getting so little for what they do. It isn't like Myanmar is a very cheap country. 50.000 ks. will not buy someone much. Most families need to pool all income together to make ends meet. All, so we can have cheap clothes....  (or whatever else they produce in those factories).

language and misunderstandings

It makes me laugh sometimes and sometimes it is highly frustrating... language and cultural differences...

A year or two ago, I did a unit at school about water and water conservation. One of the things i asked the students to keep track of was how often they went to the toilet I was rather surprised when one of the students responded with: " 1 time a day, right after lunch"...  He (and i found later many with him) thought that going to the toilet meant doing a number 2, the rest didn't count as going to the toilet. We had some fun over that one.

Another difference that comes up regularly is the afternoon/evening-confusion. Myanmar refer to anything after 3 pm as 'evening'. This causes much obvious confusion with westerners when they are told they have an 'evening bus' or something similar. :luckily, I am more aware of it nowadays and usually double check, just to make sure whether they mean their 'evening' or my version of it. 

Beer doesn't count as drinking alcohol (or at least 1 beer doesn't), leaving early can be anywhere from before daybreak to somewhere around 10, "it doesn't take long" is a very elastic expression, and "It takes 3 hours" usually has me add at least an hour or 2 to the total to correct for lack of awareness of time.

Not all changes are for the better

With the current relaxation of the restrictions posed on Myanmar, a lot of tourists and business people come in. More are expected every day. As I mentioned in a previous post, hotel prices are sky-rocketing and several big hotels refuse to sign deals with travel agencies at the moment.

I knew all this,. I also knew a contract was cancelled by a big hotel less than a month after it was signed. Still, I was extremely surprised when a colleague told me today about her dealings with one of the hotels. She and her soon-to-be husband have arranged their wedding reception in this hotel. Everything has already been planned for a few months and they have paid half the price already as deposit.

Can you imagine her surprise when she got a phone call from that hotel earlier today telling her that the price of the reception has gone up by 50%?

She told me that now  no hotel wants to have fixed prices and they all put in a little clause about the chance that prices may be reviewed. But 50% extra!! Absolutely preposterous!

They're not sure what to do. The wedding is in a week....

Some good news to  though. The latest information is that from June 1 it is possible to get a visa-on-arrival in Yangon for a 70 day business visa. Still, all the paperwork needs to be in order and you need to have a clear background, whatever that means....

Hopefully the 6-month visa will soon also mean a 6-months stay permit. Now, you can have a 6-month visa (business) and still need to leave the country every 10 weeks. Extremely annoying and unnecessary. With the visa-on-arrival slowly being reintroduced, there might be changes on the duration of stay as well..

Unesco World heritage Sites

Finally have some time to keep the blog updated and can't think of a single thing to write. Not that there is nothing going on... every week some VIP or delegation visit this country. It seems like the world is falling over itself to come and have a look and see what this country is really about. But this blog is not about politics. It makes for interesting conversations though, especially if you run into people at the embassy It used to be the odd tourist there who wanted information about this country, now it seems to be people from world organisations (business or otherwise).

I did read in the Myanmar Times the other day that there are three sites here that are hopefully becoming UNESCO world heritage sites. A site near Pyay, one in Sagain, and I forgot the third one. Surprisingly, Bagan was not yet on that first-up-for-application-list. It is the most well-known site in Myanmar and of absolutely breathtaking beauty. I have been to the site in Pyay but it wasn't a good day to visit it being very hot and dry that day. I hope that Myanmar will get funds to maintain and develop these three sites better. It isn't much fun as a tourist to look at a heap of dirt and having to guess what it is supposed to be, especially not with a temperature of about 38 Celsius.

I do think though that one day in the not so distant future, Bagan will compete with Ankhor Watt as one of the most impressive sights in South-East Asia. At the moment it is relatively unknown. I do know people who have visited both destinations and they all agree Bagan is superior. I haven't been to Ankhor yet so can't say which one I prefer. No matter, I do know that every time I visit Bagan, I seem to have forgotten just how beautiful and impressive it really is.

Construction

In many countries the construction business seems to be a slow sector at the moment, not here though. It seems like everybody is building. Houses, shopping malls, car sales centres (yes, I've spotted 2 more...), hotels, and what not. in the area around the school there are 2 houses being build. Well, houses.....  the buildings are huge. Rich Myanmar have a penchant for elaborate designs preferable with Greek-style columns (sometimes as tall as the three stories of the house in question). They also love to put concrete over every bit of space that wasn't used for the house. Heaven forbid you'd have a garden! As a fellow teacher (Myanmar) exclaimed years ago when we looked out over a concrete yard somewhere: " do you know how expensive it is to have a garden designed!"  Duh...  What happened to the good old fashioned 'do-it-yourself'?

Prices for land and buildings have gone up even more recently. Not that they were anywhere near cheap before. You'd be thinking you'd buy a piece of land in downtown New York instead of Yangon. And you don't get much for it either....

They're now building hotels on the double as well. There is a shortage of hotel rooms since many tourists and even more business people pour in. But of course, building does take time. They better hurry though before Myanmar prices itself out of the tourist market. I read eh other day that a hotel that charged around $80 for a hotel room last year, now wants more than $240 for that same room...  And now, I won't tell you which hotel that is...

Yangon, which  used to be so green is rapidly turning into another typicla Asian city. I hope they will be able to preserve the beautiful parts. Though it seems people here do not know how quickly they can tear down buildings and houses that would be qualified as cultural heritage anywhere else. If this continues, there will be little left on the charm of Yangon...

Follow the leader

This country often makes me smile. And wonder. I'll tell  you why.

The first time I noticed the 'Follow the Leader' syndrome here was when I was looking for an internet cafe when I first arrived. Internet had just taken off here and internet cafes were sprouting like mushrooms everywhere. I thought it rather funny that you could usually find several internet cafes grouped together in the same street. I also wondered whether this was a good way to run a business. Of course, being at that time a traveler, internet cafes were of a high interest to me (I admit internet still is but of late we have a, rather shaky and slow, dial-up connection at home) but I noticed the phenomenon with many other things. We loved to go out for Kyay-Oh (a kind of noodle soup) before we had this big family and there were not one, not two, but al least 4 or 5 Kyay-Oh restaurants near the one that we liked (they were the only one serving vegetarian Kyay-Oh).

Whole streets have been devoted to a trade or type of product in Yangon. For stationary you go to 32^nd street, there is a street where every tradesman can repair your umbrella (which is good business during the rainy season and the hot summer), there is a street down town where you can buy watches and have them repaired, a BBQ -street (19^th street) and so on.

It does remind me of medieval european cities where tradesman used to huddle together hence streets in old neighbourhoods having 'trades' names like 'cobbler street', 'saddler street', and 'weaver street', but here we are talking about 20^th century business.

This morning I was reminded of this again when we went to a teashop for breakfast. I hadn't been down that road for a week or two and was surprised to see that there was yet another car sales centre being build. 'Opening Soon' it announced proudly. This must be the third or 4^th car sales place being opened this spring. I wonder if there are so many people in this country who still can afford to buy a car. Most people who have that money already own a car (or more) and everybody else doesn't have the money to buy a car AND afford the fee to buy the licence to drive it (the really really expensive part of owning a car here). So who are all these new sales centres targetting? Or will this be a case like so many before where one person made good money until everybody else saw him (or her of course) do so and jump on the bandwagon. I've heard a story or two by now where profits have become very thin indeed and some people have decided to quit because business had become unprofitable.

After all, how many internet cafes does one want to visit in a day?