Category Archives: Traveling

Myanmar Trip

Myanmar Development week

I visited Myanmar recently. The main purpose was to meet some local business people but also to attend few presentation sessions at the Myanmar Development week held in Yangon and mainly organized by UN ESCAP and UMFCCI. My last trip to Myanmar was in 2005 and many things had naturally changed quite a bit since.

The Airport was functioning smoothly and I got through the immigration with no issues. Although I heard that one of the speakers at the development week had had some problems due to visa issues. A word of advice here, the tourist visa is easiest to apply, if you are visiting for a short time. (Also as a bonus you get much nicer treatment in the embassy than business visa applicants.)

We stayed at PARKROYAL Hotel Yangon, which exceeded my expectations. It was like a decent 4-5 star hotel in any Asian city. Everything worked perfectly. We booked a private city tour, which was really good. Of course we had to ask the tour guide to skip the pagodas and tourist attractions and to show us real Yangon life. Was really nice to have our own Wikipedia on Yangon for couple hours. Poor guy probably expected to do his usual routine tour.

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Getting a Myanmar Visa in Bangkok

getting a visa

I have plans to travel to Myanmar end of this month representing Sancus Group, and to attend the Myanmar Business and Development Week, therefore needed to apply for a Visa (the stamp, not the credit card…). Obtaining Visa’s can be tricky, especially in Asia. Although the situation is improving certain countries still require a visa prior to entry, including Myanmar.

So, I headed to Myanmar Embassy near Surasak BTS station this morning. I have to say that it was a surprisingly pleasant experience. I got a heads up from a friend not to go there when it opens as the queue starts to pile up little after 8AM (the embassy opens for visa applications at 9AM), but to wait around 10AM when the queue has mostly cleared out and the process is faster. It certainly was, maybe 5 people in front of me in the queue. Of course I had the wrong form (downloaded cleverly and filled up in advance), so I filled up the updated form and stood in line. Finally reached the counter. “We only accept color photos”, said the clerk. Great. I still couldn’t get rid of my black and white passport photos. Luckily near every embassy, some business minded person has started up a photo shop.

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