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  1. #1
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    Yangon Airport bombed - the civil war is hotting up :(


  2. #2
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    ^ Myanmar coup: Thousands of Burmese flee to Thailand after intense fighting

    Myanmar coup: Thousands of Burmese flee to Thailand after intense fighting - BBC News

    great business for the altruistic Thai police

  3. #3
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    I was teaching in Yangon last September, then came back to Thailand/UK for my cancer tests. Now that all seems OK I hope to return to a new job in Mandalay in August. I follow the independent Myanmar news web sites on a daily basis and am well aware of the terrible violence and murders/shootings/torture every day in the country. Such a sad situation...
    Groping women when you're old is fine - everyone thinks you're senile

  4. #4
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    I hope they win, that will be another nail in the coffin of the CCP.

  5. #5
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    The opposition groups sound like something from a movie - Liberty Thunder and Anonymous Mission Team Alpha.
    Anyway I hope they win.

  6. #6
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    Quote Originally Posted by Ukan Kizmiaz View Post
    The opposition groups sound like something from a movie - Liberty Thunder and Anonymous Mission Team Alpha.
    Anyway I hope they win.
    Hopefully they will do it without that nasty piece of work, Aung San Suu Kyi

  7. #7
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    Would have loved to post a 2010 picture of Yangon Airport. However, being not too clever with computers I have no idea how to do this for this tread.

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    Yangon Airport 2010....
    Attached Thumbnails Attached Thumbnails Yangon Airport bombed - the civil war is hotting up :(-1-dsc_0032-vertrek-van-yangon-naar  

  9. #9
    Thailand Expat DrWilly's Avatar
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    Double click the picture now to enlarge it…

  10. #10
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    To be helpful.


  11. #11
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    I used Rangoon Airport to leave Burma for Bangkok in 1985 after a short trip there.

    I checked in, and after presenting to customs officials all my collected receipts for money spent during the week that we were allowed to stay in the country and then checking and re checking the amounts against the receipt for the money I officially exchanged for Kyat on arrival, I was told to pick up my luggage and go to the plane.

    There was a door from the small terminal onto a concrete area next to the runway and I along with about a dozen other bewildered passengers were shunted out of the terminal into the heat, where there were four planes, all belonging to Burma Airways, but we had no idea which plane was the one for Bangkok.

    We had to walk up to a plane and shout up to the pilot in the cockpit and ask them if theirs was the Bangkok flight. The first one replied "No, I'm Kathmandu, try the third one down"

    The third one down was indeed the Bangkok plane and we trudged over, left out bags by the hatch and ascended the stairs onto the plane and waited 30 minutes until the ground crew and cabin crew arrived.

    Travel was truly an innocent delight in those days.

  12. #12
    Thailand Expat armstrong's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by taxexile View Post
    I used Rangoon Airport to leave Burma for Bangkok in 1985 after a short trip there.

    I checked in, and after presenting to customs officials all my collected receipts for money spent during the week that we were allowed to stay in the country and then checking and re checking the amounts against the receipt for the money I officially exchanged for Kyat on arrival, I was told to pick up my luggage and go to the plane.

    There was a door from the small terminal onto a concrete area next to the runway and I along with about a dozen other bewildered passengers were shunted out of the terminal into the heat, where there were four planes, all belonging to Burma Airways, but we had no idea which plane was the one for Bangkok.

    We had to walk up to a plane and shout up to the pilot in the cockpit and ask them if theirs was the Bangkok flight. The first one replied "No, I'm Kathmandu, try the third one down"

    The third one down was indeed the Bangkok plane and we trudged over, left out bags by the hatch and ascended the stairs onto the plane and waited 30 minutes until the ground crew and cabin crew arrived.

    Travel was truly an innocent delight in those days.
    That sounds awesome mostly because I can just read about it and not actually have to deal with it.

    Why did you need to present receipts for everything? Surely small stores selling water etc wouldn't have them.

  13. #13
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    On arrival you were required to exchange a minimum amount of money, i think it was 75US, at the terrible official rate for which paperwork was given, but on arrival once you had changed the 75US at the government exchange desk, you were then accosted by local moneychangers who gave 10 times the official rate for johnny walker red label and marlborough cigs.

    everybody travelling to burma knew this and came with whisky and cigs. we had dollars as well, but they wouldnot take them.

    the transaction was carried out in the toilets at the airport full view of officials who obviously took a cut from the moneychangers. the 75US barely covered the weeks travel which was heavily controlled, and receipts were given by official guesthouses, the travel company that supplied the jeeps that we travelled in and some restaurants and so long as you spent the 75US and had receipts, then they would stamp you out of the country.

    The extra burmese money we had plus the dollars we all carried paid for "luxuries" like western cigs, souvenirs, beer etc. small traders loved the dollars.

    the burmese locals were the nicest people i have ever encountered on my travels, many spoke good english, but they were wary of us, as foreign tourists were always being watched and followed by what i assume were government or police agents, and i am saddened when i read about what is now happening in that stunningly beautiful country. they deserve better, much better.

  14. #14
    Thailand Expat DrWilly's Avatar
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    You also had to carry cash because banks charged extortionate rates to withdraw money or cash cheques and credit cards were not accepted. Not even for purchasing flights. I found the hard way when a few flights to Bagan burnt nearly all my cash and then I had to exchange Thai baht at a 20% commission.

  15. #15
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    We worked there in the 80's for a Korean Oil Co named Yukong, who were in a JV with the Gov't (Military) and it certainly was a different country. I can't remember the official exchange rate because it didn't apply to us, we had Military guys who were both active and retired looking after us so the rules applying to most visitors didn't apply to us. We had drivers licences and were allowed to travel by road or any other means to anywhere we wanted to, could use the Gov't guest houses as our hotels while travelling by road, all our money was changed through the black markets with no documentation required, we could work and stay in the country as long as we wanted where as tourist could only stay for what I think was 1 week, that sort of thing.

    I can remember thinking it would have been the most expensive country I'd ever been to if using money changed at official rates, but it was the cheapest place I'd ever been when black market rates were applied. I can't recall the exchange rates but the spread was ridiculous between official and un-official, one was something like 5 Kyat to the USD and the other was 60. I do remember you needed to be a Steven Hawkins to pay large bills in cash as the currency notes weren't the normal denominations of 5, 10, 20, 50, 100 sort of thing and were odd denominations like 15, 35, 75, or something like that. Peeling off the right amount of notes to pay a 1370 Kyat bill out of a wad of notes like that was best left to the locals. Amazing country though, many good memories and no bad ones at all considering it was the very definition of a Military dictatorship. Wonderful people, we employed a heap of them who were over the moon to have a job that paid extremely well and came with accommodation, food, medical facilities, uniforms, and so on.

    On the airport, true or not I don't know but the story our Western chopper pilots spoke about as if it was absolute fact is that there was a hangar there with a brand new never assembled WWII Spitfire still in its shipping boxes, the only one known to exist in that state anywhere in the world.

  16. #16
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    Quote Originally Posted by taxexile View Post
    marlborough cigs.
    State Express 555 were worth a lot more. I never did the bathroom trick, my exchange was done in the taxi with a third man going along for the ride. I also remember they did not have enough headlights to go around so you turned on your lights while passing a car. I would always splurge and stay at the Strand for about $ 15 usd a night.

  17. #17
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    I also remember they did not have enough headlights to go around so you turned on your lights while passing a car.

    the jeep we travelled in had a permanently leaking radiator, it was holed in many places. the driver would keep his eye on the water temp. gauge and when it got too hot, or when steam appeared he would stop and plug the leak by pressing a soft banana into it, he kept a few bananas specially for this purpose, after a few minutes the banana flesh hardened into a solid mass, the leak was temporarily plugged and we would drive on.

    the fix would work for about an hour or so and then would work loose and the radiator would start leaking again, the water temp would rise and the whole "stop, fix, wait a bit, drive on" procedure would be repeated.

    I would always splurge and stay at the Strand for about $ 15 usd a night.
    i stayed there on my last night, paid a kings ransom for a coke with my meal, pure joy after the local coke, called "thumbs up", i think it came from india.

  18. #18
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    Thumbs up

    Great stories tax, hw and ao.

    Keep em coming.

    Oh, and Willy as well.

  19. #19
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    Quote Originally Posted by taxexile View Post
    the fix would work for about an hour or so and then would work loose and the radiator would start leaking again, the water temp would rise and the whole "stop, fix, wait a bit, drive on" procedure would be repeated.
    They were masters of keeping old vehicles and machinery running, everything was so old and they had no access to spare parts so they had to be! There were steam rollers working on roads that were from pre 1910 for example, they'd get maybe an hour out of them before something else would break down and they'd have to figure out another get-around to keep it working.

    Certainly anyone there back then would recall the old British motorbikes that were everywhere, left over from WWII and the closely following years no doubt. The locals hated owning bikes like BSA's or Royal Enfield's because they used a lot of petrol and oil, both of which were tightly rationed when we were working there (but of course we were exempt), and spare parts were non existent. So a few of us came up with a plan that was win/win, we were going to import a container full of lightly used motor scooters from Thailand and do clean-swaps for their classic British bikes. Your 1940's Beeza for this 1980's Honda, they loved the idea of this! What stopped it was our local import/export agents checked into who would need to be paid off to make it happen as exporting anything considered to be historic was a no-no, and there'd have been no meat left on the bone by the time we got the bikes out of there.

    Anyway, here's a pic I took while driving a truck from Rangoon to Mandalay. At that time I think tourists could only visit Rangoon, Mandalay, and Pagan, and they had to travel by air. The sight of Westerners with modern machinery and vehicles was quite the novelty for the locals and once we got out into the middle of nowhere where the project sites were, most people had never seen a whitey before. Kids would cry and run away

    Yangon Airport bombed - the civil war is hotting up :(-img_0005-0-jpg

  20. #20
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    Naypyitaw Airport on a busy day...

    Yangon Airport bombed - the civil war is hotting up :(-naypyitawairport2018-jpg

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