Homeward Bound. With a 28-hour journey in front of us, we decided to forego the joys of Yangon and stick close to home. We had a long leisurely breakfast and, toward the end, I saw that the two guys at the table next to us were brewing their own Peet’s coffee! I told them that I thought I was hard core, but this put me to shame. One of them was someone who had made a ton of money in financial services in California and had started a foundation focused on Burma in 1999, four years after his first trip, undertaken in search of Buddhist meditation practices. Partners Asia is now a big presence, with more than 150 million dollars invested. We had a long and fascinating talk about the problems he was helping with and how they did all this amid the restrictive, nigh-on impossible regulations in place. They have forged relationships with foreign corporations to help with currency transfer: a Singaporese mining outfit makes money here, but can’t get the Kyats out, so Partners Asia sends dollars to Singapore and then takes the Kyats in Myanmar! Sue hoped to forge a relationship between his foundation at Cetana, and took full contact information.
We finished packing and went down to meet with Ba Win, the Bard Vice President for pre-college education. A Burmese educated in the US, he sits on a lot of boards and provides expert knowledge. Sue talked to him about Cetana and its opportunities and challenges, and he talked about areas in which he would like to see increased activity. We had started at 11, and before we knew it, we were ten minutes late for our cab. Mr. Aye, ethnically Indian, had picked us up the night before at Schwedagon, and we had his card. His English is pretty good (and pretty funny), and we’ll use him again on the next trip.
We had more than an hour to kill before we could even check in, but we were soon through “security” and in the departure lounge for Silk Air, which was taking us to Singapore. We bought a Shan bag for Andrew at the shops, had a plate of surprisingly good fried rice at the cafe, and, before we knew it, we were at Singapore Airport. The skytrain took us to our terminal and we settled into a very comfortable phone charging area, had a bite to eat, and boarded the plane for our 11:55 PM takeoff. Since it was only 10:30 in Yangon, we were able to enjoy the late night dinner, watch a first movie, and still sleep for seven hours before waking, watching more movies, and waiting to touch down in Frankfurt.