---
type: Country
title: Myanmar
description: A country in civil war with twenty tourists a day — a closed currency you can't buy abroad, a black market rate that moves daily, a midnight curfew that strands taxi drivers, and a capital Harry found entirely safe.
tags: [myanmar, yangon, military-junta, civil-war, currency, curfew, buddhism, censorship]
timestamp: 2026-08-05T12:00:00Z
---

# Myanmar

Harry spends a few days in [Yangon](/places/yangon.md) with
[Cameron Mofid](/people/cameron-mofid.md), for whom it is the **193rd of 193
countries** — Laos, filmed afterwards, completes the set.

His verdict: pleasantly surprised, and a country that is genuinely undiscovered
and authentic. He is careful about the qualifier — the areas tourists are allowed
into were, in his experience, very safe, and people are suffering elsewhere.

## The situation

*Obs: the political summary below comes from the video's description, which is
more precise than anything in the narration. Under the schema, the description
outranks the transcript where they differ.*

- **A 1962 military coup** imposed a socialist regime and isolated the country.
- **Limited democratic reform in the 2010s**, with elections led by the National
  League for Democracy.
- **The military seized power again in 2021**, ousting the NLD and returning the
  country to authoritarian rule and open conflict.
- **The civil war** between the junta and the People's Defence Forces has caused
  **over 6,300 civilian deaths** since the coup, alongside airstrikes, arson,
  torture and extrajudicial killings.
- **The Rohingya genocide** drove **over 700,000 people** into Bangladesh, and
  investigations suggest **up to 25,000 lives lost** to military action.
- **Censorship is severe** — internet shutdowns, VPN bans and high data costs —
  and **at least 98 journalists** have been detained since 2021.

Harry's own framing on the ground is the comparison he draws with Ukraine: a
country being at war does not mean the whole country is dangerous. People are
shooting at each other while he films, a long way from the city.

## Observations

### From [All Aboard the Myanmar Dictatorship Express! 🇲🇲](/videos/cSO2NF9gQ-M.md)

- **There is a night curfew**, roughly midnight or 1am until 3am, and the streets
  are genuinely empty. If you're in a bar when it starts, you stay until 4am.
  Harry's taxi driver drops him at his hotel and then has to wait until 3am
  before he can drive home.
- **The kyat is a closed currency.** You cannot buy it outside Myanmar. Harry
  arrived with some only because [Luke Damant](/people/luke-damant.md) had given
  him a stack before he left.
- **There are two exchange rates.** The official — locals call it the white
  market — and the black market rate, which is better and which tourists are not
  really supposed to use. It is volatile and moves daily, so you don't know what
  you should be getting and largely have to trust whoever is changing it. A
  subscriber told Harry the correct rate so he wouldn't be cheated.
- **Immigration took five minutes**, because there are barely any foreigners on
  the flight.
- **Roughly 20 to 25 tourists a day** visit the country's most famous pagoda,
  against, Harry is told, a great many three years earlier.
- **Why they don't come isn't fear**, according to the guide who tells him this —
  it's Thailand. Next door, more developed, direct flights, no transit. Myanmar
  needs one or two connections, which costs time and money.
- **Incomes have collapsed.** The answer Harry gets on wages is that nothing is
  stable and most work has fallen away.
- **80 to 82% Buddhist**, and Myanmar practises the Theravada school — the same
  as Thailand — as against the Mahayana school of Japan, China and Korea.
- **The population is around 52 to 53 million.**
- **The country is far more religiously mixed than he expected**, with churches,
  mosques and Hindu temples alongside the pagodas, and a great range of faces and
  dress.
- **Thanaka** — the yellow paste worn on the face by a large proportion of
  people — is not makeup. It's skincare, and it's traditional.
- **Betel is chewed everywhere.** A betel leaf wrapped around lime paste, chewed
  as a stimulant. Harry tries it and reports feeling mildly energetic after five
  or ten minutes.

## Places

- [Yangon](/places/yangon.md)