Lobstered

20 hours ago, MartinBangkok said:

This goes to all the Everest-owners, and Fortuners, and Pajero-owners: Why do you guys like driving around in a truck??

My 2 litre diesel saloon has 507 NM of torque, burns 0.5 litre per 10km and is a real car..

What am I supposed to have brought I need  a car that 

Can carry 7 people

Is comfortable over long distances

Has reasonable off road ability when visiting in-laws farm

Good safety features for transporting my baby son

Can carry large loads

For me the Everest was the best option, but if you can recommend something better then I will go and test drive it tomorrow.

I do like the high driving position I find it helps driving here being able to see as far ahead as possible. But there are definitely time in the city I wish I had a smaller car.

Muffin trays are readily available in Thailand and work well for yorkshire pudding especially the four large muffin trays

You are allowed 400 cigarettes duty free entering Myanmar. Price of a pack outside the airport is 2500 kyat for 20 for a western brand, If you get local then they are much cheaper.

leaving 200 Western Cigarettes are USD19 in the duty free shop.

When entering the country they scan all luggage now at customs at Yangon Airport. Although I find that they are not really all that interested in what foreigners are bringing in and they normally only scanned my checked in luggage not my hand luggage.

Yes still there is no problem you just pay the USD3 per day up to 90 days overstay and then it goes up to USD5 per day I believe.

However you should be careful immigration announced about 6 months ago they were going to start treating overstays more seriously and start blacklisting overstayers. However I have not heard of them implementing this.

There is Nay Pyi Taw about half way between the two. It is worth having a quick look at for its total weirdness

It is roughly a 10 hour drive from Yangon to Mandalay all on a reasonably good motorway. There is a train but I do not know anyone who has taken it. Most locals doing the trip would take the bus. the easiest would be to fly.

Currently there is a business visa on arrival. If you get a letter of invitation from a registered business in Myanmar then you can just show up at Yangon airport and get a 70 day single entry business visa on arrival (for a fee of course) with no pre-arrangement, if you are from one of the 50 off approved countries . Tourists either need to get a tourist visa from one of the Myanmar Embassies or use a travel firm that can arrange for you to pick up the visa on arrival.

The Myanmar Government has been discussing having a visa on arrival system (or visa waiver system) for tourists almost from the first day it came to power. However they still have not implemented it. Therefore I think the chances of them starting any sort of permanent residence visa in the near term is very unlikely.

I'm not sure but I would very much doubt that there is any western standard eduction or health care in Bagan. I would seriously consider leaving your wife and child in Thailand and negotiating with your company for regular travel back (there are now direct flights between Bagan and Bangkok)

and that was back in the days when Burma was supposedly off limits.

Burma was never off-limits. AFAIK, the sanctions only applied to western countries and many companies found ways to get round the regulations.

Most of Asia has been trading/investing in Myanmar for yonks!

Absolutely in 2010 the last year of full sanctions by the EU, Aus and US Myanmar received USD22 Billion in direct foreign investment. Most of it from China and Thailand but also Japan, S Korea and vietnam.

The real issue was that most of this investment just made a very few people very rich and provided no benefit to the local population. In fact most of the benefit and money never actually left the investing country. If you look at the Chinese investment in Hydro-electric dams. China provided all the materials and all the skilled labour. Myanmar just provided the land (kicking thousands of people off their land with no or very limited compensation) and the unskilled very low cost labour. Then nearly all of the electricity generated by these dams go to China,

Clearly the company that has rented the stages, video screen and sound systems is doing very well from all of this. The whistle and T-Shirt sellers are probably doing ok. The shops in Terminal 21 are at least getting more visitors whether they are actually buying more who knows probably just using the toilet and cooling down a bit. Otherwise I do not think that many businesses are doing well at all.

The norm in Myanmar is for car hire to be car plus driver. It is possible to negotiate with the owner to just rent the car but they will normally charge you more. This might be changing now as car prices are starting to come down to sensible levels. I'm not sure what the actual rules are in terms of license required, I know for me I could not get insurance without having a Myanmar license.

The Blues Brothers and Casablanca

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another poster mentioned 45000+ for something rather good with most amenities like wifi, cable TV, 24 security, fitness/gym, swimming pool etc. included.

The 45,000 BHt (USD1500) a month was not for a luxury condo (there was no wifi, no Sat TV, no swimming pool, no gym). It was a basic apartment, the rooms were decent, there was air con in every room, there was a lift (with a generator so you would not get stuck in a lift during one of the very regular power cuts), there was 24 hr security.

but there was no generator for the individual apartments, you had to pump water up to a holding tank to have running water, the place was totally infested with cockroaches.

Housing standards in Myanmar are way way way below the level found in Thailand. But anything even remotely up to the standard most foreigners are willing to live in are going for USD1500 a month and up

I think most of you might be quite shocked at the cost of living in YGN as an expat.

It's very expensive.

Hmm, I worked there 2012-2013.

Condo cost 4,500 baht/month.

Breakfast, lunch, evening meal and beer was less than 200 baht/day...

'Company' for a whole night was under 900 baht

Perhaps my lifestyle is different to others?

Simon

Prices of accommodation in particular have gone through the roof in Yangon in the last couple of years. A 2 bedroom condo in a reasonable location is going for the equivalent of BHT 45,000 plus a month.

I would not hold my breath for this to be implemented. Visa Waiver for some countries has been on the cards for over 2 years with no progress not even for the ASEAN countries for which they have signed a commitment to it.

There are still a lot of negative attitudes in the government to change before they will start to issue residency. Plus really if they did offer it now I do not think that many foreigners who had got used to life in Thailand would be that interested in downgrading to Myanmar. Mobiles very expensive, internet total rubbish, house incredibly expensive in Yangon, no health care, limited nightlife options.

Seems like Barlcays are totally inconsistent. I was very clearly told by my branch when I moved overseas that if I became a non resident in the UK then I would not be able to have a UK bank account. They even phones my recently threatening to close my account as they believed that I was non resident.

Also their recent change so you can no longer notify them online when travelling means that my debit card gets refused about 90% of the time when overseas. I made a complaint asking why they had changed this (I used to just use the online banking system to notify them of my travel plans and never had my card refused once) and they replied that their anti fraud system is so good now they do not need to have this pre notification now. So I wrote back and asked why if their anti fraud system is so good does it 99% of the time refuse to allow me to take money out of the ATM machines at Bangkok airport as this is one of the most common transactions I have going through my account. They replied that their anti fruad system does not look at individual customers spending patterns but at the average customers spending pattern. Therefore it is totally and utterly useless for spotting fraud in my account.

It is AIS on a contract (It is provided by my company's Bangkok office so that I'm contactable when I'm outside of Myanmar as Myanmar mobiles still do not roam)

My Thai SIM has started to work in Yangon but not in Nay Pyi Daw. My UK sim still does not work at all - I understand it is SIMs from ASEAN countries that now work in Myanmar.

My Thai SIM will make and receive international calls and recently I have received some international texts on it but I still can not send international texts on it

It definitely has not been implemented yet. Knowing how fast the Myanmar Government moves I think it is unlikely to be in place by February.

You will both need a visa to enter Myanmar. You can get them the same day at the Myanmar embassy in Bangkok.

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I saw a copy of the original law that was drafted and it was awful, it really looked like they found it in the archieves from the old Military Junta on how to control the people. So it is great to see such progress being made. With so many of the other countries around Myanmar really clamping down on civil society in their countries and trying to deny them a voice it is amazing to think that Myanmar may soon be one of the best examples of civil freedom in the region.