October 14th

October 14th

We have quite a packed schedule for our time in Yangon. Each day of the conference will be 4 sessions of 1 hour and 20 minutes each, which is quite a lot of talking to be done. We got through today quite well, although it was tiring, and I now have to work out talks for tomorrow. The good news is that there is no English language television, so no distractions there!

I woke up at 4.30 this morning to hear the very distressing sound of water dripping. It wasn't raining at the time, so I got up to investigate and discovered that the air conditioner was dripping onto the floor. This explained why the beds were pulled out from the wall!

In this heavily regulated economy, there are some really big surprises. From India we could call home for about R15 per minute or about 50 cents Australian, less in Chennai and more in Bhimavaram. Here the hotel owner told us he thought about $3 to $5 per minute US. We confirmed this with Dr Ram our host. At those prices there won't be any phone calls home until we get somewhere with a more globalised economy.

Part of the reason for the costs, I think, is that the Government sets an official exchange rate that is way out of kilter with reality. They probably do this so they can earn lots of foreign currency to pay for imports. Only foreigners are allowed to own foreign currency, and it is illegal to pay for anything in foreign currency. Well this sets up conditions beautifully for a black market in US Dollars. Although nobody is allowed to own US dollars, the price quoted on everything is always in US dollars, although I imagine shops and other businesses would have to actually prise things in the local currency.

As yet we have not actually changed any money into local currency and are leaving that until we absolutely have to- for example when we check out of the hotel.

Because of the communication hassles we haven't yet been able to change our flight plans. Tomorrow we will have access to the internet at an office at the place we are having the conference at. I'm hoping to post this then and also possibly send some emails home. Michael will send an email to our travel agent in Brisbane. Our plan (such as it is) is to change our flight to Singapore to Wednesday instead of Thursday, then just get back to Australia any way we can on the first available flight. If we have to spend the night in Singapore we will do that. We were told that if we went on standby on the same flights as the ones we are taking that leave on Thursday evening, we would be unlikely to get on as there were already 18 people on the waiting list to both Sydney and Brisbane. But there may be other flights, so we will wait and see.

God can clear the path for us anyway. We discovered this in Chennai on our way out. We arrived a little later than we should have and there were two queues for security clearance, and the line you went on depended on which airline you were flying out with. We were directed to the longer queue. After a few minutes of seemingly going nowhere, Michael prayed for God to clear the way for us to get on the plane. Within seconds a security guard asked us to show our tickets. He said "You will never get through this line in time, go on the other line", which by now was just two people. We got express treatment! We went from possibly being late to board the plane to actually having some time to shop.
Tomorrow should be a good day here in Myanmar. The weather here is considerable cooler than India. It's more like Narrabri spring weather, possibly touching 30 degrees, but not too humid. We seem to be getting afternoon showers but most of the time the weather is just very pleasant.

Blessings

Keith