It's happy hour in the bar of The Strand hotel in Yangon.
A smartly dressed barman mixes a Strand Sour as fans slowly revolve below the high ceiling. Musicians play. Tourists at tables beside the teak-lined walls check guidebooks and discuss where to go for dinner.
How about Le Planteur, an elegant villa on the shore of Inya Lake? It serves fine French food, and offers an $87 tasting menu featuring dishes such as lobster salad, prime veal fillet in pistachio crust, and Grand Marnier souffle with orange sauce. Or maybe the hotel's Strand Grill, with its vaulted ceiling and marble-inlaid floor, where lobster thermidor costs $44?
This is modern Myanmar. It's no longer the British colony where my father was born in 1904, nor the 33-year-old independent state (then called Burma) I first visited in 1981, then returned to in 1992. That was a scary place, brutally governed.
In 1992 the country was ruled by the State Law and Order Restoration Council, the fearsome junta that held onto power even after Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy won a general election in 1990. (Courtesy of Bloomberg Business)
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