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?