On my recent trip to Yangon, Myanmar for an exploratory mission I discovered how difficult it is to work in this country.Â
My first big mistake was changing money at the airport to have some local currency. They gave me an exchange rate of 450 Myanmar Kyat per 1 US dollar. This didn’t bother me until I got to the hotel when we asked about changing money. The hotel receptionist told us they would exchange $1 to 1000 Kyat, but if I went next door to the market they would give me 1300 Kyat. Wow did I get taken. The only saving grace was that I only changed $20.00.
Upon arrival at a five star hotel I asked if they had internet access in the hotel room for which I was told no. The only thing they had was WiFi in the lobby area or I could use the computer in the business center, which they only had one which was to be shared by all guest.Â
I thought WiFi in the lobby would be okay so I gave it a try. My laptop saw the WiFi and I waited and waited for the connection but it never happened. I finally gave up and went to the business center to use their computer. I was able to finally get on the internet but at a snails speed (and maybe that is too fast). I had to wait and wait for the internet to load (I will never complain about dial up again). I then complained about the service being so slow and they told me that during the day because of all the traffic and very little bandwidth it was very slow and best to use either late at night or early in the morning.Â
The next morning I got up early and promptly went to the business center to try my luck again. Yahoo it worked. I could actually get on the internet and surf. Now my next task was to log unto my home server using Windows Server 2003 remotely. I have never had trouble doing this in any other country I have visited up until now but it was not going to work in Myanmar. I guess they had a block on my server. So I tried accessing just via the internet, success I got to my email. Now I was back in the real world able to communicate once again via email, but only in the early morning hours.
After reading my company email I went to check my yahoo email only to find out that the Myanmar government blocked many sites such as yahoo mail, hotmail, and many others. So I would not be able to access this account but at least I could access my company email. Â
Next problem was using my cell phone. Apparently ATT doesn’t have any reciprocal agreement with Myanmar. So no cell phone. I checked with some local mobile companies about getting a SIM chip but this would cost me $3500.00 (US), no way. I checked the phone rates at the hotel and they would charge $8.00 per minute (US) which seemed a little high. I guess if I talked for 10 minutes it would cost me almost as much as the hotel for the day!!
Here I am an international traveler and should have known better to check things out in advance but I have become lazy over the years as the technology has improved so rapidly that I really never expected such problems. Next time I will be prepared.
Yes I will go back and do some more investigating but not for a couple of years.
I wonder if I could actually source some product from Myanmar if it would ever get delivered?
Technorati Tags: Noon International, Yangon, Myanmar, Kyat, internet, SIM chip
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