Wine making, a tent hotel to beat room shortages, luxury-priced
jungle trekking and exotic hot air balloon tours: Burma’s economic
revival is spawning some unusual businesses by entrepreneurs willing to
tread where no-one has gone before.
The unusual businesses are mostly related to tourism—one area of the
emerging economy that is booming while infrastructure development and
heavy industry remain debating issues rather than works in progress.
Foreign tourists are flocking into Burma, which had about 1 million
visitors in 2012, according to Minister of Hotels and Tourism Htay Aung,
with arrivals at Rangoon’s international airport up 50 percent over
2011.
They face a serious accommodation shortage, but some of them seem
willing to part with large sums of money for sweaty adventures.
British holiday firm Explore is offering hikes up Mount Kyaiktiyo in
Mon State as part of a US $5,320 rugged but luxury-priced 14-day
trekking holiday. Kyaiktiyo, a 1,000-meter climb, is home to the Golden
Rock, a revered Buddhist shrine.
“Burma has only recently opened up to visitors and after decades of
relative isolation the way of life remains largely untouched by modern
times,” says Explore in its promotional guide. “On this adventurous
introduction to Burma we trek through remote lands and also spend time
in the principal highlights of the country. We trek to remote hill
tribes of the Shan state.”
In Bagan, well-heeled tourists will soon be able to stay in a luxury
tent hotel designed to overcome Burma’s debilitating accommodation
shortage. And visitors to the ancient city can get a bird’s eye view—for
a price—of all the scattered temples by drifting serenely overhead,
carried by hot air balloons.
The Apple Tree Group, headquartered in Vietnam, is offering luxury
air-conditioned tents in a new complex near the banks of the Irrawaddy
River to open in April. Tent-room prices have yet to be announced.
“Bagan is the hottest travel destination in Southeast Asia,” Apple
Tree general manager Kurt Walter said in a statement announcing the tent
hotel plan. “Myanmar [Burma] is on every traveler’s radar screen, and
Bagan is going to emerge as the hottest attraction in the country.”
Another company, Balloons over Bagan, owned by Shwe Lay Ta Gun
Travels and Tours of Rangoon, is charging $360 per person for 45-minute
air balloon rides over the ancient temple-festooned landscape.
But that’s only a taster. The firm, which gets its balloons from a
British manufacturer, is offering six-day air tours across Burma later
this year—at $8,000 per person.
If some of these business activities and prices seem a bit bizarre in
a country only just emerging from 50 years of isolation, where most of
the population live in poverty and have no access to mainstream
electricity, perhaps the more eccentric entrepreneurs are the Frenchman
and the German who are cultivating grape vines in the tropical hills of
Shan State.
Surrounded by tropical forest and in a region of the country where
political and ethnic instability is not unknown, the hills have become
home to not one but two vineyards producing wines which might one day be
exported.
Red Mountain Estate is overseen by Frenchman Francois Raynal and Myanmar Vineyard is run by Bert Morsbach from Germany.
Both are striving to produce a range of white and red wines from
vines imported from Spain and Italy and planted in misty 1,000-meter
high hills. It seems to be working.
“There appears to be every reason that quality mid-level wines can
and are being produced in sub-tropical climates including Myanmar,” wine
writer and industry commentator Jim Mullen in Bangkok told The
Irrawaddy on Feb. 11.
Mullen has yet to taste wines from the Red Mountain vineyard estate
but said a recent new tasting by him of the products from the rival
Myanmar Vineyard at Aythaya “showed substantial improvement in both reds
and whites with a Sauvignon blanc showing all the typical qualities of
that grape.”
“Comparisons will be made to Thai wines which have, at least with
some wineries, made remarkable progress during their relatively short
ten or so year existence.
“Whites from most Thai wineries, generally from Chenin blanc, have
always been quite well made but suffer, as do all Thai wines, from
ridiculously high taxes making them substantially more expensive than
most imports,” said Mullen. “One must hope the government [in Burma]
chooses a wiser approach to taxation than has occurred in Thailand.”
The Burmese-nurtured wines might one day chase an export market, but
in the meantime the two vintners say they are selling well inside the
country to hotels and restaurants.
Red Mountain Estate said it produced over 100,000 bottles in 2012,
fetching around $11 apiece—a bargain compared with a 45-minute balloon
ride over Bagan.
source: The Irrawaddy
http://www.irrawaddy.org/archives/26662
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