Home UpMoulmein 5: The Shock of the New

There isn't much that's new in Moulmein, but here are a few exceptions.

The waterfront road (Strand Road, as in Rangoon) stretches for a few blocks like this—with the occasional gap where you can see the original house type. One such gap is just to the middle of the frame.

Here's that gap.

Farther along the same strip there are houses that look like parts of San Francisco from the '50s.

If Moulmein were plugged into the global economy it would have antique shops and craft stores catering to authenticity-hungry foreign tourists. It doesn't: not a one. But it does have markets, and despite decades of a government trying to put wraps around the country, the markets have been thoroughly penetrated with products appealing to the popular but pent-up desire for contact with the outside world. How else can you explain the movie-themed T-shirts and the Nike swoosh?

Moulmein University was closed down tight—those students are just trouble—but it had an air-conditioned and staffed computer lab.