YANGON – Rip-Off Rangoon, where a plate of Lok Lak about half as good as you’d get in Phnom Penh costs US$10. Where a handful of veneered restaurants and bars slap on an extra couple thousand kyat, every few months, for diminishing portions of an exponentially-depreciating quality of fare. Refusing to join the race to the bottom is The Phayre’s Gastrobar a new restaurant with nighthawk aspirations next door to the famous Pansodan Gallery.
JAKARTA – While Widodo didn’t spend very long in office in Jakarta – a job described by some as the 3rd most powerful in Indonesia, he did enough to convince former President Megawati Sukarnoputri – daughter of Sukarno, the country’s first President – to set aside her ambitions to run again and throw her Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDIP) behind Widodo.
YANGON – It was hot Tuesday evening just before the start of the Myanmar’s rainy season, and Ni Ni Shein sat in her car, the engine running, next to Junction Mawtin, a shopping mall just a few minutes’ walk from the city’s Chinatown.
RANGOON — Aung San Suu Kyi’s constitutional reform roadshow is due to hit Sittwe sometime over the coming weeks, but it is not yet confirmed whether the opposition leader will speak in the troubled Arakan State capital.
