If you ask Tin Mg Win, the landslide win seized by Myanmar opposition party the National League for Democracy (NLD) on November 8th’s general election is too early to celebrate. The 83-year-old former general manager at Yangon’s AC Martin, a US architecture firm, recalls the last time the NLD came out victorious at the ballot …
Than Zaw’s Yangon teashop may lack the laminated wooden tables of the restaurant across the narrow lane, but where elegance is absent a rough charm replaces it. There is a countryside simplicity that endears his shop. Its knee-high tables, stapled-together plastic chairs and alfresco setup seem more apt for a dusty farmer’s lot than a …
Continue reading Myanmar’s transition from the seat of a teashop
On a street stacked block by block with colonial British buildings, the Government Telegraph Office doesn’t instinctively stick out. Like so many of its neighbors, the façade is grimy and crumbling. There always seems to be a soft trickle of water flowing from exposed blue plumbing pipes, which water lively patches of ferns and moss …
Continue reading Myanmar’s telegram system buzzes on (The Diplomat)
Poorly pasted together and full of pixelated photographs, my Myanmar Lonely Planet has been following me forlornly ever since I picked it up some four years ago from a child book hawker in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. Besides my China LP (covered in brown paper to hide its entry from Chinese customs), it stood alone on …
Justin Calderón 