Nyi Nyi ®
Mingalabar! All this week we'll be focusing on one of the fastest changing hotel scenes on the globe: Burma, or Myanmar. (For Burma or Myanmar, see here - as fence-sitters, we'll be using the two interchangeably throughout the week.) Coming up, we'll take detailed looks at some of the country's standout hotels, but for today, let's talk basics.
There are lots of Myanmar myths. Take dollars, not local currency! Book months ahead! Hotels are overpriced! There are hourly blackouts! Some of these are wrong, some are right. Here's what you need to know before you go:
· Adjust your expectations, service-wise. As in: be prepared to be followed round the breakfast buffet, having each dish pointed out to you, yet to have to ask for a second cup of coffee. As in: expect to be phoned during the middle of the night to ask what time you’re checking out, and woken up early in the morning by the housekeepers talking loudly outside your room before they walk in on you, ignoring the Do Not Disturb sign. As in: don’t be alarmed if you open your bedroom door on check out to find three members of staff waiting outside, ready to burst in, check the minibar and carry your stuff out. Basically,expect zero privacy throughout, and bizarre over-attentiveness when you don’t want it, but under-attentiveness when you do.
· Related: try asking for a late check out and report back how it went. We asked at one hotel and it was as if we’d asked for the moon on a stick.
· Although service often seems to come from the computer-says-no school of training, the Burmese are a lovely, helpful nation, and this can often penetrate through the weird customer service barrier. No, they won’t let you check out late, but they’ll let you use the phone to book a rival hotel, they'll book you a taxi, or advise you on a restaurant you’d actually want to go to, not one that gives them kickbacks. For example, staff at the Strand Hotel in Yangon (five stars), hearing we wanted a Myanmar, not Western, restaurant, sent us to an outdoor streetfood place where we were the only white faces for blocks and dinner cost under $2. For two people. That is reading your guests correctly.
· Everyone talks about the serious room shortage in Burma, and says you must must must book hotels months in advance. This isn’t true. We stayed at 10 hotels in Burma, and only booked one of them more than two days ahead. Most we turned up at on the day. It was the start of high season, and there was only one hotel in the entire country that had no room for us (and another that only had a budget-prohibitive suite). If you desperately want to book somewhere like the Governor’s Residence, which only has 49 rooms and which every American in Myanmar apparently wants to stay at – then sure, book ahead. But if you’re not that bothered, don’t panic.
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