hello everyone,
this is my 4th visit to myanmar. i will tell you about some relevate issues for those of you that may be visiting this SE Asian country. You all may know myanmar better by its former british name of Burma. anyway you can all do you own reading about myanmar's (MM) current govt. i will not be disscusing this as it has been discused elsewhere to nauseum.
okay. you no longer have to buy $300 worth of FEC (foriegn exchange currency) so this is a plus. you MUST bring CASH! it can be US, Thai, Japanese, Euro or ant oither stable currency. moist is eaisaly exchanged on the black market. the current rate is 930 kyat (said Jet) poer US dollar. the MM people are extremely honest so you do not have to worry about pick pockets or general thievery (other than the shop owners charging you the foriegner rate). so do not worry about bring what to most locals is a lifetime of money in the form of cash. all hotels and airplane flights must be paid in US $ by tourists. you can get a fan room for about $3 per night per person and an AC room for between 7-10 bucks. very high standard hotels are available to all of our rich friends! hahahaha!
the food is very good. most meals can be gotten for about 1 dollar or less. the water is bottled and is about 150K per liter. i buy 20 liter jugs for 150K. there is a deposit that is returned when you are finished.
the roads SUCK! fly if you can affoard it.a 400 km trip will take 9-12 hours! the buses are AC....kindof! they have no toliets onboard.
one of my favorite places is Bagan (i am writing from there now!) it has 1000s of buddist temples called pagodas. the entrace fee is $10 for tourists, and at this time you can stay as long as your visa is good for. tourists must pay (in US $) to enter many of the pagodas around the country. i iwll try to upload some pictures at a later date. the internet is very slow and difficult in MM. let me also say that many sites are banned including yahoo, hotmail, netzero, MSN and most othee e mail sites. use a web based site if you have access and at this time gmail.google.com is functioning too. this could change at any time.
i will be adding more tripo reports about MM as i can. maybe one day i will see you here. have fun this winter, and remember Ice is for DRINKS!
eddie