simon43

Thanks for the kind comments everyone. I'll add my replies at the bottom of this post 🙂 Today (Friday), I only had 2 science lessons in the morning to teach. (My school employs me on an hourly basis, so I don't have to stay on the premises if I have no lessons to teach). Therefore, after completing my teaching obligations, I jumped into a yellow taxi to visit a colour print shop. 8 years ago when I last taught in Mandalay, these little taxis didn't exist. I think they have been imported from India. Now there are hundred of them all over the city. At the colour print shop I needed to initiate some printing for my educational charity >> large A2 size vocabularly posters and sets of A-Z flash cards. A flashcard set (A6 size) will cost me about $10 USD and each poster will cost about $7 USD. The actual exchange rate is highly variable - anything between 2,000 - 5,000 kyat to $1 USD. I don't have to pay in USD, so the converted rate is just for my own information. But the price is certainly more expensive than my previous visits. Posters and cards are printed on heavy vinyl paper, and that's where the cost comes in. To provide alphabet sets and poster sets for each school will cost me about $50 per school, and there are many schools.... I might invest in an A2 printer if it works out cheaper! Here's one of the vocab posters that I designed. The code number against each fruit can be entered into the free Android app that I wrote some years ago, and the student can then listen to my dulcit tones pronouncing the word correctly. Next I walked up the dusty streets to check out a hotel as a possible long-term location to stay. The monthly rate for a room, as quoted on the internet was about $600, (my school will pay 50% of that fee). However, the hotel reception quoted me the ludicrous price of $1,100 USD for a small room per month. I declined their offer! Outside the hotel was a rather nice mobile petrol station 🙂 Feeling hot, I took another taxi to CityMart, where I ordered Shan Noodles. This tasty dish is very easy to remember to say in Burmese. It's "Shan Kao Sway", which sounds just like the Thai words for white rice! Once around the busy Citymart to buy my food and home again in a tuk-tuk taxi. Throughout my 3 hour trip, not a single foreigner was seen.... No chance of this happening anytime soon 😞 @Hummin - you can only transfer money in using Western Union (it's always been like this for yonks). My local currency was running low, so with some trepidation I put my Payoneer debit card into a local bank ATM (hoping that it wouldn't 'eat' it). Lucky for me, it all worked fine and spat out 3 million kyat, about $100 USD. The decent beach on the west coast is currently the scene of heavy fighting! Here it is in more peaceful days. But many of the hotels are owned by the military. It took me about 4 days riding my off-road motorbike to reach this beach from Naypyitaw a few years ago (the road wasn't very good!). So I'd give it a miss in the future... Food prices have definitely increased since my last visit. Hardly surprising, considering the inflation rate and difficulty to source goods... @ChiangMai, the personal risk level is very low. Of course, anger that the local people feel is not directed towards foreigners. The risk is simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time. I make wide detours around police checkpoints/boxes, in case someone decides to start shooting!

I recall visiting this hostel a few months ago when I lived in Laos. I ate lunch there. It seemed a very popular place for young foreign tourists. Clean, well-run, no sign of anything 'dubious' etc. I suspect the authorities know exactly what's happened and by whom, and are scurrying to hide the evidence and brush everything under the carpet...

I'm not sure how many 'men' in Myanmar identify as women. Based on the apparent lack of wokeness, I suspect the number is rather small (about 0.00000001%). One fact that is very clear is that the vast majority of young Myanmar women are slim and pretty, whilst those in Thailand are fast becoming lard-buckets. Nothing wrong with lard-buckets lending me a hand, so long as it only involves my shopping bags...

You won't get any money out of that Ruskie - he can't even afford a shirt....

Well, any country is what you make it 🙂 Looking for loose women, ladyboys? You're probably in the wrong country. Looking for culture, unspoilt nature, Buddhist temples etc? Come on over! As for the beer, if you're referring to 'Myanmar Beer', it's good but absolutely not flavour of the month (or year), since its company profits go to the military. Most bars no longer sell it....

The only foreigners that I've seen are a few teachers... no tourists @Keeps - she is still in prison, and has been since February 2021. She is still highly regarded and respected by the Burman majority ethnic group, less so by other ethnic groups who historically have been seeking autonomy for their regions for many decades. Being in prison and incommunicado, no word or comments are ever heard from her.

Although Mandalay is close to the 'front line', the city is reasonably quiet and safe. Yes, there are armed police and soldiers, and the road passing the Chinese consulate is blocked off and guarded, after someone chucked a bomb at the building! Electricity power cuts happen several times a day, but that was also the case many years ago. For me, one noticeable difference from my first visits many years ago are the large number of solar panel arrays mounted to completely cover the roofs of many buildings. Buildings always had diesel generators, but now solar power is much in evidence. That's annoying for me, because the solar controller units generate harmonic radio signals that interfere with my reception of UHF/VHF satellite signals 🙂. Of course, my ham radio transmitter is safely locked up in Thailand.... I will ask the military to renew my Burmese ham radio licence, but the chance of that happening is... er .... fecking unlikely! I'm watched the various YouTube vloggers, and some of those videos are quite interesting and others are fear-mongering. I note that the UK Foreign Office gives advice to the effect of "don't go there, and if you are there, then get out whilst you still have the chance..."

I'm living and teaching back in Myanmar again (I'm in the city of Mandalay again, where I note that the nearest fighting is only 13km away). \ Anyway, I won't comment about the political situation, but I'll maybe post about my day-to-day experiences 🙂 So I'm teaching Science at an 'international' school in the city. As I'm a scientist, and as I've been teaching science previously in Myanmar, the job is very easy and enjoyable. In my first few days of class, many of my young students asked me my age (I'm going on 66 years old). I gave them a quiz a=25, b=45, c=65, d = 85 years old. The majority of my students chose 45 years old!! So they have already qualified for top marks in whatever exam they fail LoL... I took a yellow tuk-tuk to the local Ocean shopping centre (neither tuk-tuks nor shopping centre existed 8 years ago when I was last a teacher in Mandalay). Outside the shopping centre were 20 very large advertising billboards. 3 of them had adverts for clothes and food shops. The other 17 had adverts for pre-schools, schools, colleges and universities..... At the weekend, I walked once around Mandalay fort, (about 8km all the way round), and then up the hundreds of steps to the top of Mandalay Hill (see my photo). When I used to do this walk 8 years ago, both sides of the steps were crowded with locals selling trinkets etc for the many foreign tourists. Today, not a single seller and the only foreigner I saw during my walk around the fort and up/down the steps was myself....

18 months ago I had to return to the UK for a couple of months, having not visited the home country for 22 years. These are some of the things that struck me: - Many houses had solar panels on their roofs, almost unknown 22 years ago - The cost of food in the supermarket was expensive IF you choose to eat processed crap. I bought fresh fruit, vegetables, yogurt etc and found the prices quite reasonable. - Most people were very polite and helpful to me, regardless of their ethnicity - rented accommodation prices were expensive! - The service of my new GP and NHS hospital were excellent and fast, (bet that's a surprise to some...) I had serious thoughts about returning permanently to the UK (that was my plan when I flew back to the UK). But to survive on a UK state pension would mean taking money from the social security system (money which I would be legally-entitled to, eg rent allowance etc etc). I don't think that is a good plan for your retirement years 🙂

Ah - that is an 'in-joke' about how I seem to move from location to location at the drop of a hat 🙂 I had planned to shortly retire to the PI. The plan to retire to the PI is still on - the UK pension is index-linked there.

I was denied entry into Myanmar about 2 years ago because the junta threw their toys out of their pram after the UK government froze their overseas bank accounts in London! So they took their revenge on all Brits in the country, including jailing the previous UK ambassador who was still in country. Anyway, things have calmed down on the visa front now. The reasons why I returned are (in no particular order): 1 - I love the country and the peole 2 - At going on 66 years old, the idea of retiring to a beach in the Philippines doesn't really excite me 3 - By being in country, I can do more of my educational charity work outside of my teaching hours. Yesterday, I printed up 50 laminated information flyers (in Burmese) about my free Android learning app. I'll post these outside government schools etc so the local teachers (who will have Android phones) can install the app and use it to learn correct English pronunciation, vocabulary etc - the app features many videos, audio files etc 🙂 Here's is a photo looking down the eastern side of the moat towards Mandalay hill.

Sadly, there is no retirement visa in Myanmar. To stay long-term (1 year repeating), you either need to have a business visa associated with your employment, or you need to marry a local. Hmm, marry one of those beautiful, slim Burmese ladies? Now that's a thought.......

Nope - their reaction is the reaction that I have received whenever and wherever I have worked in Myanmar over the past 12 years or so. My attire probably identifies me as a teacher, as opposed to a tourist, (do tourists wear a tie?). My post was to compare attitudes between those in Myanmar and those in Thailand. (That's not to say that I find Thai people rude or unhelpful, only that I find people in Myanmar to display a greater level of friendliness and helpfulness than Thais).

Well, that's easy! I can stand for 5 minutes without losing my balance 🙂 My comments about being old were tongue-in-cheek. The help given by Myanmar people towards foreigners is normal - the fact that I am somewhat older and dressed unlike a tourist (the only non-tourist foreigners left in town are teachers), probably heightened their urge to help 🙂

I jump into a taxi to go to the nearby shopping centre. I pay the driver at our destination and he hands back the small tip that I gave him. I press the tip money into his hand and he is all genuine smiles. I go to the supermarket, getting the items on my list. As I push my trolley slowly down the aisles, women (young and old smile at me). I check that my trouser zip is not undone!! At the cashier payout, I pay the cashier and start to put my items into my backpack. Several young women crowd round to help me, fetching extra bags from the cashier and packing my items. All smile genuine smiles as they help me. I go to the pharmacy and buy some cough syrup. Again, as I put the purchase into my bags, 3 young staff help me to put my backpack on my back. Throughout my shopping trip this morning, total strangers smile at me and say hello. So...... what's happened? Do I suddenly look decrepit? Do I have $100 notes glued to my jacket? No! The only difference between my shopping trip last week and today, is that last week I went shopping in Thailand and today I am shopping in the city of Mandalay, in Myanmar, where civil war is rife and a white-skinned foreigner is rarer than a virgin in Soi Cowboy... Perhaps they are smiling and helping out of pity for the foreigner who missed the last plane out of dodge 🙂 (An exaggeration actually, there are flights every day). As to how I have ended up (AGAIN!) in Myanmar, let's just say that my sense of direction at airports isn't very good in my old age 🙂