Postings from my recent travels in southeast Asia, Italy and England. As usual I found that travel reveals more about oneself than about ones destination.

Monday, February 25, 2002

Susan Eats her Way Across Asia

I love to eat and after a couple of weeks of Myanmar style cuisine and interminable egg, toast and coffee-less breakfasts I was really feeling hard done by. I'm afraid I would be hard pressed to say anything positive about the food in Myanmar with the exception of the street snacks - many of which have been borrowed from Indian cuisine. The Myanmar food served in restaurants just doesn't appeal and there is a reason that so many travellers are eating Myanmar attempts at Chinese and Indian dishes.

But if you are willing to pay there is good grub to be found and I had a lovely meal at the Summit Parkview Hotel in Yangon for $4 US. They hold buffet dinners on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. I went Saturday which was a seafood buffet. Now I am not a big seafood or fish fan but I found enough to satisfy myself. Lovely salad, really good buns and bread, butter that tasted like butter, scalloped potatoes (kind of weird choice but they were very well done), a really good (but fiery) spicy seafood salad, cream of leek and potato soup (which the chef admitted used green onions since leeks are unobtainable in Myanmar) and very nice desserts.

Other smaller extravagances in Yangon included Mi Mi Lay ice cream (wonderful stuff at 90 kyats - about 25 cents), Italian Lavazza Espresso at Cafe Aroma every morning (half price if you have it before 10 a.m. - 115 kyats) and samosas, palatas and various fried things at street stalls (20-50 kyats).

Here in Bangkok I couldn't resist the dinner buffet at the Executive Suites Hotel for 330 baht (actually 388 baht with service charges - so about $15 Canadian). I stuffed myself silly with really high quality food. My brother would have loved it (his advice - always go for the expensive stuff - don't fill up on salad and cheap things). They had wonderful Vietnamese barbecued pork which was rolled in some kind of leaves, pork filets in a mushroom cream sauce, minute steaks in a red wine sauce, deep fried shrimp, prawns in a cream sauce, Thai pork, salad, taco bar, pasta and much much more. All served on the 25th floor of the Executive Suite Hotel overlooking night time Bangkok. Spectacular!

And yesterday for lunch I had a very nice salad bar at the Sizzler restaurant (Bangkok is SO western) for 99 baht (so about $4 Canadian). I filled up on lettuce, cherry tomatoes, fresh pineapple, asparagus, really good chocolate pudding, great soup and other yummy things.

I figure I am heading off to Laos tonight and I don't know when I'll have such choices again - so better indulge now. I'll try and write again in a couple of weeks. Hope you are all healthy and happy. I'm having a great time and hoping that some of my clothes will still fit when I get home :-)

Notes about Internet Access and Human Rights Abuses in Myanmar

Myanmar must be one of the last places in the world without Internet access (not that this is necessarily a bad thing for foreigners although it doubtless is for the local population). You can send and receive e-mail in Myanmar (at quite an exorbitant cost - usually $1 US per half hour and $1 US per message) but only using the e-mail account of the establishment - not your own account. So for example my bag was lost by the airline when I travelled to Myanmar. I sent an e-mail to my travel agent asking for his assistance using the hotel's rather dodgy computer (complete with seasickness-inducing wavering screen). This cost me $1 US and when I received his brief printed reply this added another $1 US to my hotel bill. Obviously backpackers want to inform friends NOT to respond to e-mail from Myanmar unless explicitly asked to and to also remember that any e-mail is (supposedly) censored by the government. So take care not to say anything that will get any of the people you meet in Myanmar in trouble.

For example - you wouldn't say something like "And Mr. Smith of the XYZ Hotel said that the government tax is nothing but robbery and that he hates the repressive tinpot tyrants that rule over Myanmar". Not a good idea at all. Personally I find it hard to believe that it is possible for the government to be reading even the small amount of e-mail produced and sent from within Myanmar but since two members of the comedic troupe the "Moustache Brothers" were jailed for telling jokes critical of the government it is good to be cautious (read about the incident and their release in July 2001 after 5 years in jail).

Receiving and sending e-mail is the full extent of the Internet in Myanmar. You cannot surf, you cannot access hotmail/yahoo and you definitely cannot chat. And yet companies like Inforithm-Maze produce software that helps you learn about the Internet in the Myanmar language. This seems very strange. Many hotels and guesthouses have websites although these websites maybe inaccessible within Myanmar itself. I'm sure that SOME people in Myanmar must have 'external' internet access (I was told that there is a country wide Intranet that allows Myanmar people to look at Myanmar-based sites). There are hackers the world over and I can think of no better use for a hacker's 'talents' than figuring out how to surf the whole world's Internet from within Myanmar without alerting the government.

While in Myanmar I went to an intriguing conference on information technology in Yangon, Myanmar's capital city. It was held at the Summit Parkview which I've mentioned above. The quality of the work that many of these software companies in Myanmar are doing is quite impressive but much of it must be being funded heavily by the government. For example one large company is Inforithm-Maze which had developed an office integration type product that allowed multiple users to access e-mail, a company directory, calendaring software etc. But the price was outrageous - something like $600 US for the program and then $40 US each for every user to install it on their computer. In a country where per capita income is somewhere between $300 and $600 annually this seemed like a ridiculous price for a software product. I asked an executive of Inforithm-Maze what happened if they typed in the URL of a website outside of Myanmar and the answer was simple - "Nothing". Just a blank screen - but how long can this last?

A final note - while wandering around the backstreets of Myanmar I was shocked to come across an authorized Apple dealer! I went inside and spent a very enjoyable and informative 15 minutes chatting with the female proprietor. There were iMacs on the shop floor and prices were actually not too outrageous. That was the only brand name computer that I saw in Myanmar - there were no Compaqs, HPs or IBMs in evidence. PCs in use at the few places that offered by the hour usage (to compose your e-mails which would be sent out under their account) were all clones.