Myanmar calling!
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Ancient temples stand at sunrise in Bagan, central Myanmar. After closing its doors to the West for half a century, Myanmar has reopened, inviting all to come and discover its treasures, ancient palaces of kings long gone, legends and mysteries told in stone
Residents drive a horse cart on a dusty road near old temples in Bagan, central Myanmar
Ancient temples stand in Bagan, central Myanmar.
Ancient temples stand during the sunset in Bagan, central Myanmar
Villagers travel in a river close to Buthidaung in Rakhine state, Myanmar.
Villagers transport merchandises in a river close to Buthidaung in Rakhine state,
Bamboos are attached to a river boat for transportation close to Buthidaung in Rakhine state,
Golden spires of Massein monastery are seen on the banks of Myanmar's upper Chindwin river.
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Myanmar picks first Miss Universe contender in 50 years
With a whiff of controversy and not a bikini in sight, a US-educated business graduate was selected as the first Miss Universe contestant to represent Myanmar in more than 50 years.
Moe Set Wine will take her place on stage at the global beauty pageant in Moscow next month, reflecting dramatic political and social changes in the former junta-ruled nation, which last fielded a Miss Universe contender in 1961.
"I feel like now I am part of the history and I feel like a soldier that is doing something for the country and my people," the 25-year-old Wine said after her selection late Thursday.
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"I feel like now I am part of the history and I feel like a soldier that is doing something for the country and my people," the 25-year-old Wine said after her selection late Thursday.
Wine, aged 25...
Wat wine is she...? Oh, Moet...
Moe Set Wine will take her place on stage at the global beauty pageant in Moscow next month
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The Golden Rock
The Golden Rock is one of the most imortant religious sites in Myanmar and a dream destination for devout Buddhists. It's basically a boulder painted gold balancing on the edge off a cliff, according to myth hold in place by a strain of Buddha's hair.
The rock is a quite spectacular sight, especially at sunset when it's lit up by the setting sun and electric lights gathering a huge crowd of pilgrims and monks. The setting sun makes for some great camera shots in the background of your photos.
If you are fair skinned expect to be constantly approached by locals wanting a photo with you. Sunrise is not nearly as great as sunset as the rest of the mountain covers the first rays of light.
You're probably better off getting to the other side off the mountain - maybe to the other pagoda at the end of the mountain - for some great views.
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Lost kingdom: Myanmar's forgotten royals
THE SIMPLE LIFE. The granddaughter of Myanmar's last king, princess Hteik Su Phaya Gyi shows her photo during an interview at her residence in Yangon.
YANGON, Myanmar - In a modest Yangon apartment, the granddaughter of Myanmar's last king lives poor and unrecognized by her neighbors – a far cry from the power and riches of her ancestor.
Princess Hteik Su Phaya Gyi said the childhood days when her family had a bevy of servants and retained some of its royal status were now a distant memory.
The British colonial regime dethroned her grandfather King Thibaw in 1885 and later the military junta, which ruled the country for decades, kept the family out of the public eye.
"They didn't want us to be somebody," said the silver-haired princess, swathed in a shimmering purple shawl worn especially for the rare interview.
"I have lived as an ordinary person for 60 years," she told Agence France-Presse.
"Of course I repent a little over the glorious times that we had when we were young," she said, displaying a lively wit undimmed by her 90 years.
The demolition of the monarchy, at the end of the third and final war that brought the nation firmly under the colonial yoke, smashed centuries of royal rule in the country then called Burma.
Thibaw and his wife, Queen Supayalat, were swiftly and unceremoniously removed from Myanmar and deposited in the small Indian seaside town of Ratnagiri.
Thibaw died in India aged 56 in 1916, shortly after suffering a heart attack, and the family eventually fractured.
Some settled in India while others made their lives in Myanmar, which remained part of the British empire until 1948 and came under junta rule in 1962.
A cloak of silence was thrown over the monarchy by successive Myanmar regimes that viewed it as a potential rival, while army leaders sought to evoke much earlier warrior royals.
"Most of Myanmar has forgotten about the king," said deputy culture minister and royal historian Than Swe, who has spearheaded a campaign to return Thibaw's body to Myanmar.
A visit by President Thein Sein to Thibaw's tomb in Ratnagiri during an official trip to India last December reignited interest in Myanmar's monarchy.
But Than Swe said Myanmar's government had more immediate priorities, such as the sweeping reforms implemented since junta rule ended in 2011.
Queen Suphayalat's tomb in Yangon is barely marked. When the family tried to place a simple sign there to inform visitors of the pedigree of the occupant, the former junta immediately removed it.
From demi-god to prisoner
Thibaw was born into a courtly lifestyle steeped in incredible luxury and his fall was bewilderingly sudden.
The royals lived a lavish and isolated existence within the walls of their gilded teak palace in Mandalay. They could only be approached by people crawling on their knees.
"This man was a demi-god in Burma. He was worshipped by his people," said Sudha Shah, author of "The King in Exile: The Fall of the Royal Family of Burma".
"Suddenly he was controlled like a puppet on a string by the British."
The British wanted Thibaw off the throne to appease business and Christian missionary interests in the country, Shah said.
They opted for complete destruction of the monarchy, partly due to fierce resistance to their incursion which saw the country flooded with British forces.
There were also doubts over finding a pliant royal heir that the British could rule through -- Thibaw and his queen notoriously executed dozens of potential rivals for the throne.
Restitution of the royal line was vaguely considered as Myanmar entered independence.
But one episode when the military tried to enlist the royal family to help it counter communist insurgents ended the generals' enthusiasm for the monarchy, Shah said.
Local people thronged to catch a glimpse of the family and women knelt and spread their hair on the ground for the family to walk on.
"So taken aback were the generals by the depth of public sentiment demonstrated for the royal family, that they no longer involved the family in any further campaigns," Shah said.
The family had a brief period of public activity when the princess and her siblings set up the "Miss Burma" beauty contest -- she was in charge of catwalk training.
The eldest brother, Prince Taw Phaya Gyi, also became involved in the Olympics before he was assassinated by insurgents in 1948.
Princess Hteik Su Phaya Gyi and her younger brother Prince Taw Phaya, the 89-year-old potential heir of the Konbaung dynasty, are the only surviving grandchildren.
Living with snakes and leeches
The royals, refusing the small allowance offered after the British left, were forced to make their own way in the world.
The princess used the impeccable English she learned as a child studying in a Catholic school in the southern city of Mawlamyine to land positions at both the Australian and US embassies before settling as a teacher -- a job she still does today.
But a family quarrel in the late 1990s saw her lose her inherited home and end up living "in a hut".
"During the rain the water was up to here," she said indicating knee-deep flooding. "The snakes come into the house. And leeches."
She now lives with her daughter, who works at a burial association, and said none of her six children, 20 grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren showed an interest in reviving the royal line.
She is "grateful" that Thein Sein took the time to visit Ratnagiri but believes her grandfather should not be moved.
Several members of the family scraped together the money to travel to India in the early 1990s -- her only visit to her grandparents' home in exile.
She recounted her own mother's stories of the queen standing on a balcony overlooking the Arabian Sea and weeping for her homeland.
"When I went there I looked up at that little veranda and the sun was setting. So I said 'Oh my grandmother must have felt the same', and I had tears in my eyes."
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How ready is Myanmar for the 2013 SEA Games?
The official word is "100%": now, News Report takes to the newly-built streets of host city Naypyidaw to find out if Myanmar is prepared for a 22-day regional event that it last hosted 44 years ago.
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A training ground in the Wunna Theikdi sports complex.
Entrance to the Athletes' Village, complete with multiple security checks and scans.
The interior of a shuttle bus serving the Athletes Village compound.
Entry to the media centre also requires stringent security checks.
The Mani Yadana Jade Hall, converted into the Media Press Centre cum International Broadcast Centre for the purpose of the Games
The media centre, located in Mani Yadana Jade Hall, Naypyidaw
A Myanmar policeman standing guard at a sport center ahead of the Southeast Asian Games
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A training ground in the Wunna Theikdi sports complex.
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The Wunna Theikdi Stadium in Naypyidaw.
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Workers undergoing a technical rehearsal at the Wunna Theikdi Stadium.
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Workers undergoing a technical rehearsal at the Wunna Theikdi Stadium.
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Entrance to the Athletes' Village, complete with multiple security checks and scans.
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The interior of a shuttle bus serving the Athletes Village compound.
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Empty streets and a stray dog: not an uncommon sight in newly-built Naypyidaw, but likely the calm before thousands of athletes, fans and more descend for the Southeast Asian Games.
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Entry to the media centre also requires stringent security checks.
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The Mani Yadana Jade Hall, converted into the Media Press Centre cum International Broadcast Centre for the purpose of the Games.
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The media centre, located in Mani Yadana Jade Hall, Naypyidaw.
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A Myanmar policeman standing guard at a sport center ahead of the Southeast Asian Games (SEA Games) in Naypyidaw.
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Myanmar policemen on guard at a sport center ahead of the Southeast Asian Games (SEA Games) in Naypyidaw.
Workers at a gift shop ahead of the Southeast Asian Games
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A Myanmar police officer and his trained dog check for bombs in a sports center ahead of the Southeast Asian Games (SEA Games) in Naypyidaw.
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Myanmar losing forests at a fast pace
Myanmar is facing galloping deforestation, losing forests to oil palm and rubber plantations, while the mangroves of its Ayeyawady Delta have shrunk in area by a whopping 64.2 per cent in 33 years, two new reports have shown.
Deforestation In The Ayeyarwady Delta And The Conservation Implications Of An Internationally Engaged Myanmar - a study by the National University of Singapore (NUS) - said an average of 51 sq km of mangroves a year were lost from 1978 to 2011. Thus, the Ayeyawady Delta's mangroves shrank from 2,623 sq km to 938 sq km in that period.
The study, published on November 21 in the online journal Global Environmental Change, used cutting-edge technology to map the depleting mangroves.
It noted that unlike in the Mekong Delta where mangroves have been destroyed by aquaculture, in the Ayeyawady Delta, they were lost to harvesting for fuel wood and conversion into paddy fields. Aquaculture is still almost non-existent in the area.
The delta has a population of close to eight million. But it is also an area of high biodiversity, with more than 30 endangered species, the report said.
The mangroves also act as a buffer against sea-level rise and the kind of storm surge during Cyclone Nargis in 2008 that killed 130,000 people in the region.
There continues to be debate over the issue, but many experts believe the effect of the cyclone's 3.5m storm surge would have been mitigated had the delta's mangrove cover been intact.
The digital mapping that revealed the poor state of the mangroves went a step further than two previous papers that had also pointed to their depletion, said lead author Edward Webb, a professor at NUS' Department of Biological Sciences.
"What we've done is a very solid analysis that shows the rate of deforestation is faster than previously thought, and (the mangroves) are definitely under more threat than was expected from previous studies," he said.
The report warned that if nothing was done to arrest the loss, the mangroves may disappear completely in a few decades. Worldwide, 20 per cent to 35 per cent of mangrove forests were lost from 1980 to 2007, according to the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organisation.
A separate study by United States-based non-governmental organisation Forest Trends, released last week, found that from 2011 to the middle of this year, a total of 2.1 million hectares of plantation concessions were granted to private firms by the Myanmar government, mostly in Kachin state and the Tanintharyi Division bordering Thailand.
The report charged that despite official claims of sourcing timber only from state-managed forests or tree plantations, it was "highly likely that a significant percentage of Myanmar's wood exports are sourced from natural forests - from land conversion as well as logging concessions".
Most of Myanmar's remaining natural forests are in ethnic borderlands particularly along the Thai and Chinese borders, where there has long been conflict, with little or no government control over resources which are often the domain of local armed groups.
Figures vary, but earlier this year, Myanmar's official Natural Resources and Environmental Conservation Committee in a report to Parliament said the country's forest cover had fallen to 24 per cent by 2008.
Commenting on the two reports, Dr Peter Cutter, landscape conservation manager at independent conservation organisation World Wide Fund for Nature's (WWF) Greater Mekong programme, however, told The Straits Times there was still "reason to be hopeful for a change of course in Myanmar".
He noted that in the WWF's meetings with senior Myanmar officials, there was an acknowledgement of the damage done to the country's natural resources during four decades of dictatorship and crony capitalism, and a grasp of the link between protecting natural resources and the stability and development of the country.
"It is not just lip service," he said. "They are engaging in more than just a showcase way."
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Opium Production Surged in Myanmar
The U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime estimated in its annual Southeast Asia Opium Survey that Myanmar will produce 870 metric tons of opium in 2013, remaining the world's second-largest grower after Afghanistan. That would be a 26 percent rise over 2012 production.
Ethnic Pa-O poppy farmer holds a harvested poppy stem with dried-up opium sap in a poppy cultivation in central Shan state, Myanmar. Official efforts to stamp out opium production in Myanmar are falling flat because poor farmers don't have alternative ways to make a living.
An opium field is seen in Shan state in Myanmar. Official efforts to stamp out opium production in Myanmar are falling flat because poor farmers don't have alternative ways to make a living, a U.N. agency said
Villagers harvest opium at a field in Myanmar's Shan state
A ready to be harvested opium is seen in an opium field
Opium is harvested at an opium field in Shan state in Myanmar.
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Burma’s Miss Supranational Deemed One of Pageant World’s ‘Most Beautiful Girls’
RANGOON — Burmese beauty queen Khin Wint Wah, the 19-year-old winner of Miss Myanmar Supranational 2013, continues to generate Internet buzz, being selected among the top six “Most Beautiful Girls of the Year 2013” by international pageant watcher The Beauties Concept on Wednesday.
“She was chosen in the top six among over 700 beauty queens from all international beauty pageant competitions,” Wai Yan Aung, founder of the Miss Golden Land Myanmar organization, told The Irrawaddy on Thursday.
“I am incomparably happy,” Khin Wint Wah told The Irrawaddy. “I didn’t expect that I would be selected in the top six. I will always remember it.”
Wai Yan Aung said there were more than 10 international beauty pageant competitions in 2013 and The Beauties Concept selected an initial 100 nominees from all competitions, before whittling the list down to 50 candidates. From there, The Beauties Concept chose 11 top candidates, with a 12th finalist chosen by popular vote. The final six were also the decision of The Beauties Concept judges.
“There was no voting system for the selection of the top six. The international beauty pageant judges chose the top six from the top 12,” said Wai Yan Aung, whose Miss Golden Land Myanmar organized Burma’s Miss Supranational competition last year.
He added that another Burmese beauty queen, Burma’s 2013 Miss Universe titleholder Moe Set Wine, was the popular vote winner to round out The Beauties Concept’s top 12 finalists.
“The video records of candidates’ competitions, the activities, the interviews, the photos and also the body were all included in the judging,” Wai Yan Aung said.
Khin Wint Wah has also made it into the upper echelons of three other international beauty pageant monitoring websites, placing among the world’s top 27 “Most Gorgeous Women” by The Ideal Beauty, the top 40 of The Ideal Miss, and the top 50 of the Global Beauties, he said.
“She is very friendly and her friendship among international competitors and professionals is really strong so people support her both locally and internationally,” he said.
Khin Wint Wah, who won the Miss Myanmar Supranational 2013 in August, also took home the People’s Choice and the Miss Supranational Internet awards during the Miss Supranational competition in Belarus last year.
The Beauties Concept’s “Most Beautiful Girl of the Year” for 2013 was Miss Venezuela Earth, Alyz Henrich. Beauty pageant winners from the Philippines, Serbia and Spain joined Khin Wint Wah in the top six.
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School Hits the Road for Burmese Teashop Boys
RANGOON—Kauk Ya has to wake up at 4:30 every morning. While other children his age wait for school buses to arrive, this 13-year old boy starts working, taking orders from customers at a teashop in Rangoon.
“I used to go to school, until I finished sixth grade,” he says.
Born the middle son of a toddy palm climber in Upper Burma, he left the classroom when he was 11 years old because his parents were too poor to support their six children. He found a job at the teashop, sending back every kyat he earned to his family. He also all but gave up on his dream to go to university—at least until recently, when a chance to learn came to him, on a bus.
“Our mission is simple: When children can’t go to schools, we bring schools to them,” says Grace Swe Zin Htike, country director of the Myanmar Mobile Education Project (myME), a program that provides non-formal education via mobile classrooms to children in Burma who are forced to leave school to support their families.
The interiors of the buses are converted into mobile classrooms, where children have an opportunity to learn basic literacy in Burmese and English, as well as math, computer skills and critical thinking skills through innovative, interactive instruction.
Since last month one of the buses has been driving the streets of Rangoon as part of a six-month pilot project, opening its doors to 120 teashop boys like Kauk Ya who want to resume their studies. Classes meet six days weekly for two hours per session, in the evenings after the boys finish work.
“We started with teashops because you can mostly find primary and middle school dropouts working there,” says Tim Aye Hardy, director of the project.
He says the mobile education project will be expanded later to include four levels of classes, from beginner to advanced, to prepare students for either formal education or vocational training in the future.
“We are just shedding light on what needs to be done and filling in the gap: providing education to some working children who can’t go to school. But to address the entire problem, only the government can take care of it,” he says.
Burmese culture traditionally places a high value on education, and net school enrollment rates are at over 80 percent for both boys and girls. But the drop-out rate is also high. According to Unicef, less than 55 percent of children who enroll actually complete the primary cycle.
Over five decades of dictatorship, Burma’s government invested very little in the education system. While tuition is free at government’s primary schools, parents have long been required to pay for books, school building repairs and even furniture for classrooms—expenses which often present an insurmountable financial obstacle for impoverished households.
Facing tough economic conditions under the former regime, families around the country and especially in rural areas have frequently been forced to send their young boys to cities or towns for jobs in teashops or factories. Many girls also drop out but typically help with chores at home, rather than working at teashops.
This situation has not been greatly alleviated by education reforms initiated under President Thein Sein since 2011; although his administration has called for free compulsory primary education, offering free textbooks and school supplies to students at the primary level, a lack of income for families means that many children are still required to work.
Aung Myo Min, a human rights activist and director of Equality Myanmar, says the mobile education project will not only promote children’s rights, but also hopefully help to identify some of the root causes of child labor in the country.
“The project is an oasis for working children who cannot go to school,” he says, adding, “They should consider a long-term strategy to eliminate child labor. Otherwise, the project will be caught up in an endless cycle.”
Just minutes after one of the buses arrived at a teashop in Rangoon on a recent evening, 65 child employees hopped on board. Despite a long day of working as waiters, cooks and tea makers, known locally as a phyaw saya (brewmasters), they seemed enthusiastic about the opportunity to practice writing the English alphabet. Others sat around tables inside the teashop, paying attention to the lesson, and when their teacher pointed at a picture on a whiteboard, the students correctly identified it in unison as a “map.”
“I don’t feel tired. Instead, I am happy because I want to learn,” says Kauk Ya, the 13-year-old son of the toddy palm climber, while completing an in-class exercise on building simple sentences in English. “I’m just grabbing my chance to learn now, because I want to be a university graduate to get a better job.”
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A Border City on the Edge of the Law
MONG LA, Myanmar — The smuggling route into this rebel-run jungle outpost just over the Chinese border begins on the back of a motorcycle that takes passengers through steeply terraced rubber plantations, and skirts the official crossing before ending at an outdoor market where bedraggled prostitutes mingle with Chinese tourists haggling over tiger claws, bear paws and desiccated squares of elephant skin.
At $14 each way, the 20-minute ride is a relative bargain, although the price does not include payoffs to teenage Burmese insurgents at impromptu checkpoints along the way.
Tucked into the verdant forests of Myanmar’s eastern Shan State, Mong La is better known here by its Chinese name, Xiaomengla, in part because the vast majority of its residents are Chinese, as are most of the illegal day-trippers, drug mules, Christian missionaries and comely young croupiers who work in the city’s 20 casinos, most of which are Chinese-owned.
Mong La has a hilltop Buddhist temple and a picturesque colonial church, but vice and self-indulgence, not sightseeing, are the city’s main draws. “There’s not much to do here but gamble and eat wild animals,” one Chinese matron said with a jaded sigh.
Mong La runs on Beijing time, 90 minutes ahead of the rest of Myanmar, also known as Burma. Cellphone service and electricity are provided by China. The renminbi of China, not the Burmese kyat, is the only currency accepted at the city’s roulette tables, storefront brothels and Sichuan-style restaurants.
As Myanmar embraces democracy after decades of military dictatorship, Mong La, the domain of a former Communist rebel turned warlord-entrepreneur, is a glaring reminder of the challenges the Burmese government faces in taming the patchwork of rebel-held territories along its northern frontier.
Sai Leun, the warlord who runs what is officially known as Special Region No. 4, employs several thousand armed men who, for the moment, peacefully coexist with Burmese troops and the ethnic Wa militia that controls a neighboring piece of territory.
Despite its longstanding economic and historic ties to the region, China has a conflicted relationship with Mong La. A decade ago, alarmed by the legion of officials gambling away stolen public money, Chinese soldiers poured across the border to shut down the casinos. In response, Sai Leun simply orchestrated the construction of new gambling parlors 10 miles farther south of the border on a virgin tract of jungle.
In 2012, when China severed cellphone service to the area in an effort to choke off Internet gambling, casino owners brought in satellite dishes to maintain the flow of money from those who prefer to bet from the comfort of Shanghai, Guangzhou and other Chinese cities.
Analysts say the Chinese are reluctant to pull the plug entirely — something it could easily do by blocking cross-border traffic or by cutting off the electrical supply flowing south from adjacent Yunnan Province.
“If we banned tourism entirely, it would harm more than just the casinos and hit a lot of businesses that support the local economy,” said Zhu Zhenming, an expert on China-Myanmar relations at the Yunnan Academy of Social Sciences.
Officially, at least, Beijing tries to limit access to the city by requiring its citizens to obtain special permits; outside each casino, large red signs remind Chinese citizens that they are forbidden to enter.
In reality, Mandarin speakers fill nearly every seat at the baccarat tables and electronic slot machines. Few bother applying for a pass and instead sneak in, via motorbike or by climbing through large holes conveniently located on the border fence.
Mong La thrives by appealing to humanity’s more base desires. Hotel rooms are littered with palm cards hawking “newly arrived virgins,” “mother-daughter combos” and “sassy 16-year-olds with large breasts,” and hotel televisions broadcast round-the-clock Japanese pornography, along with Chinese historical dramas and South Korean soap operas. Crystal meth is widely available, as are handguns, stolen cars and a Noah’s Ark of endangered wildlife — owls, bamboo rats and tortoises — displayed in cages outside restaurants.
The city’s anything-goes ethos has turned Mong La into a magnet for wildlife traffickers eager to satisfy the medicinal and culinary cravings of its Chinese clientele. Stores openly sell Tibetan antelope heads, cloud leopard pelts and wild tiger limbs — items banned in China. At the live animal market, caged monkeys and pangolins, scaly anteaters whose meat is highly prized in southern China, await slaughter.
Vincent Nijman, a zoologist at Oxford Brookes University in England, said Mong La has become one of Asia’s largest markets for endangered wildlife. In recent years, he has cataloged about 40 rare and threatened species at the market, among them a hairy-nosed otter — an animal that until recently had been believed to have been extinct.
During his most recent visit in January, Dr. Nijman and a colleague from the conservation group Traffic counted 49 whole elephant tusks and 3,300 pieces of ivory for sale. “There’s absolutely no attempt to hide anything,” he said. “The scale of the trade is shocking.”
At night, Mong La resembles a neon spaceship that crash-landed in the jungle. But the potholed streets are thick with desperation. “I came here a rich man, and now I have nothing,” said a 43-year-old cabdriver, a former businessman from Chongqing, who said he gambled away nearly 700,000 renminbi, or about $115,000, more than a decade ago. The driver, who gave only his surname, Zhang, said he longed to be with his family but could not leave until he earned enough money to regain his pride. “I won’t let my family come here, because this is no place for children,” he said before turning his attention back to the poker game on his cellphone.
Having borrowed money from loan sharks, some residents are trapped as they await money from relatives. Others are outlaws who have found refuge in a lawless land. Liu Qiao, 40, a blustery man, said he lost $1.6 million that belonged to his mining company in a gambling spree in Macau and fled here from China, in 2009.
Fearing arrest if he returns home, he found work as a so-called casino agent, escorting wealthy gamblers to casinos and arranging cash advances through a company that gives him a small cut of each loan. Asked what happens to those who cannot repay their debts, Mr. Liu smiled uncomfortably. “You don’t leave until you pay,” he said.
With many of his Chinese customers spending the Lunar New Year holiday at home with family, Mr. Liu was eager to accompany a group of Western visitors he mistook for high rollers. After a bone-rattling drive along the unfinished road that connects the city center to the gambling district, he showed off the Casino Lisboa, a Thai-themed gambling hall presided over by a large Buddha, and the Royal Casino, its brightly lit facade dressed in fluted columns and Roman centurions.
Inside, the mood was quietly tense as chain-smoking gamblers hovered over their chips, making bets as high as $33,000. Sharing the tables were scores of young men and women with headsets. Their job: to play the hands of remote Chinese bettors who followed the action through live video feeds.
Over dinner, Mr. Liu lamented that his gambling addiction had destroyed his family and the mining company, started with friends, that has since gone belly up. “I’ve lost all face,” he said.
But his mood brightened as he took one more stroll through the casino floor. He paused at a roulette table, threw down a 100-renminbi note bearing the face of Mao Zedong and waited. When the ball dropped, he picked up 200 renminbi from the table and walked out into the night, a smile on his face.
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Myanmar couple in 'first public gay wedding ceremony'
Dressed in matching traditional Myanmar clothes and garlanded with jasmine, a gay couple married in a lavish public ceremony that they say was the first of its kind in the conservative nation.
Tin Ko Ko and Myo Min Htet exchanged rings in an upmarket Yangon hotel Sunday, in the latest sign of changing social mores in the Southeast Asian nation as it emerges from the shadow of military dictatorship.
The marriage does not enjoy any legal status but followed the customs of other Myanmar weddings, with the two men arriving in solemn procession followed by six groomsmen in front of some two hundred guests.
"My family accepted me. I am so glad that my parents were understanding... but he had to overcome many difficulties from his family," said Tin Ko Ko, 38, of his partner in an emotional speech.
The pair, who both work for rights groups, have lived together for 10 years without publicly declaring their relationship.
Same-sex relations are criminalised under the nation's colonial-era penal code.
While the law is not strictly enforced, activists have long complained of harassment and discrimination.
But taboos around homosexuality have begun to be relaxed after a quasi-civilian government replaced military rule three years ago. Myanmar held its first gay pride celebrations in May 2012.
Tin Ko Ko and Myo Min Htet had discussed their wedding in local media, but the pair kept the venue a secret for fear it could attract protest.
But some journalists were able to attend and pictures of the ceremony were splashed on the front pages of several local newspapers Monday.
"We both tried hard to make this a reality. I am almost speechless, I am so happy," said 28-year-old Myo Min Htet, adding that the event also marked the couple's 10-year anniversary.
Wedding guests applauded as the couple kissed after cutting a red heart-shaped cake.
"This is like a challenge to our neighbours, who do not understand us and see us as very strange people," said Aung Myo Min, from the rights group Equality Myanmar, addressing fellow guests.
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Side Effect is first Myanmar band to play at US Austin South West festival
On March 15, while much of Austin, Texas, was drowning in music and marketing and thousands of tiny bands were running the streets trying to make a dent, history was being made on a little stage at B.D. Riley's.
Chances are you didn't hear about Side Effect's landmark Thursday gig amid chatter about Lady Gaga's vomit stunt, but the four-piece rock group are staking claim as the first band from
Myanmar to perform at South by Southwest.
Theirs is a fascinating story, and confirm that for all the peaks and valleys most artists go through to land on an Austin stage, few have had to endure more hurdles than Side Effect.
First, a quick history lesson. Until 2011, Myanmar was under the rule of a military dictatorship notorious for its brutality, broad censorship practices and, most prominently from an international perspective, its role in keeping Nobel laureate and democracy advocate Aung San Suu Kyi under house arrest for years.
Recently, however, Myanmar (formerly known as Burma) has undergone a profound shift. In 2010 Suu Kyi was not only allowed to leave her Yangon home to travel and speak without restriction, but soon the ban on the political party she represented, the National League for
Democracy, was lifted, allowing her to run for, and win, a spot in Parliament. She and others are guiding Myanmar in transition toward democracy. As a result, many international sanctions have been loosened, and the country is gradually adjusting to a new reality.
I sat down with singer and guitarist Darko C. of Side Effect and the rest of the band as South by Southwest was winding down. A hard, tight post-punk band, the members cite influences including the Strokes, White Stripes, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Hot Hot Heat, Handsome Furs, Silversun
Pickups and the Kooks as inspiration.
Side Effect had just returned from an overnight run to Houston, where they'd played a show for
Myanmar ex-patriots. Below is an edited version of our conversation.
How did you end up in Austin? I know you had an online fundraising effort.
Darko C.: We haven't gotten the money yet, so we borrowed the money from friends and we played a fundraising gig in Yangon on March 1. It was very last-minute. That gig was the one that made us in the position to come here.
It was a very hard decision to make, because all of our friends were suggesting, "You might end up in debt coming back. Why don't you just finish the next album and put it out and you can go next time?" But we all couldn't wait for next year. We wanted to be here this year. We just couldn't wait. So we said, "Let's do this no matter what." We took the risk and, you know, came here.
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This is how Myanmar rolls
Skateboarders find ways to overcome a lack of facilities
A boy watching Singaporean and Myanmar skateboarders at a do-it-yourself skate spot near a railway line in North Dagon Township in Yangon on a cool evening last November. Since Yangon does not have a proper skatepark – one was demolished and the other is in bad shape – local skaters have resorted to building their own skateboard obstacles in remote parts of town -
Singaporean skateboarder and freelance film-maker Juan Qi An, 28, skates on a worn-out mini-ramp at the City Centre Skatepark in downtown Yangon. Local skaters rarely use the park anymore, as the weather and general wear and tear have rendered it almost unskateable -
A lack of skate venues has led to skateboarders finding alternative solutions. Here, Singaporean skateboarding coach Tan Le Pham, 28, glides along a smooth stretch of road leading to the Sule Pagoda -
Singaporean and Myanmar skateboarders pose for a photo in North Dagon Township in Yangon. Despite Myanmar’s reclusive past, the country’s skateboarding scene has attracted fans from overseas -
A local boy wearing a longyi – a traditional sheet of cloth wrapped around the waist – skating in the now-defunct skatepark at the National Landmark Garden in Myanmar’s capital of Naypyidaw -
Singaporean and Myanmar skaters await their turn at the DIY skate spot in North Dagon Township. Skateboarders explore the city constantly in search of possible skate spots -
A tattoo of a skateboard with wings adorns the back of Nyi Nyi, who is one of the head honchos in the Myanmar Skate Association. He is working on building Yangon's first proper skatepark -
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Death in the long grass: Myanmar's snake bite menace
Swaying with the hypnotic rhythm of the king cobra rearing up in front of him, Myanmar snake charmer Sein Tin feels protected from the venomous kiss of his dancing partner by an intricate array of "magical" tattoos.
But in a land slithering with deadly serpents, many of his countrymen are not so lucky.
Myanmar may be best known for the giant constrictor, the Burmese python, but the Southeast Asian nation has a host of other snakes whose names would strike even more fear into the hearts of ophidiophobics.
Russell's viper, banded krait and spitting cobra are among the 150 species of snakes in the former junta-ruled nation, 40 of them venomous.
Their abundance, combined with a substantial proportion of people working in the countryside and a chronically underfunded health system, means Myanmar has a snake bite mortality rate around twice as high as the world average.
Long a hunter of reptilian predators, Sein Tin has spent decades capturing and taming snakes in Myanmar, and now works at the city zoo in Yangon, the country's commercial heart.
He no longer remembers how many times he has been bitten, but he does recall the four wounds inflicted by king cobras -- one of the deadliest snakes in Asia.
Wiry and weather-beaten, he puts his survival down to the writhing tattoos that coil around his arms and body, several depicting Myanmar's mythical "naga" sea serpent.
The ink was mixed with snake venom and medicinal herbs and injected into his body.
Most people would last only about an hour if bitten by a snake, Sein Tin said.
"But for me, I have longer to go and get treatment because of the tattoos," he added before plucking a metre-long cobra from the snake pit and planting a kiss on its silken brow.
- Rural risk -
While snakes do venture into towns and cities occasionally, it is in the countryside that bites are really a risk.
Slinking through tall grasses, or vanishing camouflaged into the parched earth, snakes are a particular threat to farmers.
And it is not tattoos, but anti-venom they need.
Over 7,800 people were bitten by venomous snakes in 2011 in Myanmar, according to the ministry of health, which said on average more than eight percent do not survive.
That compares with a global average of four percent, based on World Health Organisation figures.
The poison travels quickly through the bloodstream and can lead to blindness, amputations or even death.
Rice farmer Phoe Nge was tending his crops when he suddenly felt a sharp burning sensation in his foot.
"I didn't feel pain right away. I thought I had been stung by a bee. But when I looked around, it was a viper," said the 38-year-old, who lives on the distant outskirts of Yangon.
"I am a village man, so I tore my longyi apart and tied it around my foot," he said, referring to the sarong-like wrapped cloth worn by men and women.
The bandage and his ability to swiftly identify his scaled assailant as the Russell's viper -- the country's deadliest snake species -- meant he was able to receive the correct anti-venom from a nearby clinic.
- Do not run -
So what should people do if they are bitten?
"You must not run, because if you run you are going to activate the blood circulation in your legs and the venom will go very fast to the heart and the main system," said Chantal Bonfils, chief medical officer at the SOS International clinic in Yangon.
Do not try to cauterise the wound, suck out the venom or apply ice either.
"Just put on a pad and light compressive bandage," Bonfils said.
And if you cannot recognise the snake, the symptoms should help doctors identify the culprit -- blood stops clotting properly in the case of a Russell's viper bite, whereas cobra venom is neurotoxic causing blurred vision.
Antidotes to snake bites are obtained by injecting a small amount of venom into an animal, generally a horse, and then collecting the antibodies produced.
Impoverished Myanmar, unable to buy horses, has started using sheep.
The country is planning to double its production of antivenom -- to 100,000 doses, compared with 53,000 currently, according to the WHO -- as it tries to wrestle down mortality rates.
While preventative measures to stop getting bitten -- such as wearing shoes while walking through fields -- go a long way to reduce bites, once the snake has struck there is only one option.
"The best, and the only treatment if you are bitten by a snake, is to inject the correct antivenom," said Aung Zaw, deputy manager of a pharmaceutical factory run by the ministry for industry.