| Shwedagon Pagoda GVs |
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| SARA: Sacred and golden - this is where the people of Myanmar have come to pray for more than two and a half thousand years. | 00:25 |
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| Music | 00:33 |
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| SARA: The Shwedagon Pagoda has towered over Yangon, outlasting kings, colonies and coups. | 00:37 |
| Printing newspaper/Distributing newspapers | That history is still an important part of life in Myanmar today. But change is rolling in. Myanmar is opening up to new ideas, industries and cultures after almost half a century locked away. | 00:48 |
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| There are now more than twenty daily newspapers and dozens of weekly journals. And while many of these papers self-censor, readers are at least getting some coverage of the rapid developments in their own country and a wider window on the outside world. DR THANT MYINT-U: [Chairman, Yangon Heritage Trust] "I think we can be reasonably confident that this degree of political liberalisation will continue. We can be somewhat confident that moves | 01:18 |
| Dr Thant. Super: | towards democracy will continue as well, but I think how ordinary life will change, whether income inequality will simply get worse and whether the lives of the poorest half of the country - two thirds of the country - if that will change, I think remains a big question mark". | 01:45 |
| Newspaper delivery | SARA: The newspapers are still delivered in the old fashioned way, with the tug of a rope and the ring of a bell. | 01:58 |
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| It's just one example of how the old and new are woven together as Myanmar's economy expands. In the past two years, parliamentary elections have been held, | 02:11 |
| Men read newspapers | sanctions have been lifted, and the economy is now growing rapidly - but it's not a one dimensional story. DR THANT MYINT-U: "I think a lot of the coverage of this country for a very long time has been very simplistic. It was seen as a country where the only story was the story of the | 02:25 |
| Dr Thant | military junta and the generals versus the democracy movement and Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, whereas in fact, it was a much more | 02:41 |
| Yangon buildings | complicated political situation". | 02:47 |
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| SARA: "So this was one of the most modern buildings | 02:59 |
| Sara and Dr Thant walk Yangon streets | in the region at the time?" DR THANT MYINT-U: "It was one of the most modern buildings in South East Asia. It has the first underground car park in South East Asia". SARA: I'm taking a walk through Yangon's historic district with author and historian, | 03:02 |
| Exteriors. Yangon buildings | Thant Myint-U. At its peak in the 1920s and ‘30s, Rangoon, as it was then known, was at the crossroads of Asia, set to become one of the most important cities in the region. DR THANT MYINT-U: Like many of the old colonial era buildings in this area, | 03:14 |
| Sara and Dr Thant walk Yangon streets | this would have been where you went to book a passage to France, or up river to Mandalay... SARA: Thant Myint U has a deep interest in history. | 03:32 |
| Photo. Thant's grandfather | His grandfather was Secretary General of the United Nations in the 1960s. | 03:40 |
| Historic photos. Yangon | Thant wants to put Myanmar back on the map. DR THANT MYINT-U: "In those days if you wanted to fly from London to Melbourne, you had to come through Rangoon at the time". SARA: "It was almost like the Dubai | 03:45 |
| Dr Thant interview | of its time". DR THANT MYINT-U: "Exactly and it was a place where people came to for shopping from Singapore, from Bangkok as well from elsewhere". | 03:56 |
| Yangon GVs |
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| SARA: Myanmar is now trying to catch up with its neighbours. There have been more foreign investment projects here in the past three years than in the previous quarter of a century. Half of all mobile internet users have come on line in the past year. Office rents in some parts of Yangon are now more expensive than New York, but seventy per cent of people in Myanmar still don't have basic services such as electricity. | 04:12 |
| Electrical wires | DR THANT MYINT-U: "The country has not benefited at all from the general progress we've seen in Asia and what that means first and foremost | 04:46 |
| Dr Thant interview | is that we have 60 million people -- 59 million of whom are poor in a way that they probably don't have to be". | 04:52 |
| Fast motion. Traffic. GVs Yangon. People in rain | Music | 04:59 |
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| SARA: The World Bank rates Myanmar as one of the most difficult places on earth to do business. The poor are being denied their share of wealth because of crippling corruption. DR THANT MYINT-U: "One of the huge tragedies of the past 50 years is that the independent judiciary and the very first rate judiciary | 05:06 |
| Dr Thant interview | we had 50 years ago is gone after 40 or 50 years of military rule, and I think without that strong judiciary and that strong rule of law apparatus from the police through the judges and the Supreme Court, it's going to be very difficult | 05:28 |
| Yangon River activity | to tackle". | 05:40 |
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| Music | 05:43 |
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| SARA: Myanmar's past is still drifting into the present. The currents run fast and strong on the Yangon River. You'd expect a city of more than two and a half million people to have a bridge at its busiest crossing, but decades of economic stagnation have delivered little infrastructure. People and produce are packed in, side by side. | 05:47 |
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| Music | 06:38 |
| Sara to camera on ferry | SARA: Despite the changes over the past two years, there are still really strong divisions, socially and economically, here in Myanmar and this river is one of them. We're catching the ferry at the moment over to an area called Dalah which is one of the poorest areas of Yangon. | 06:49 |
| River activity | Music | 07:04 |
| Dalah |
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| SARA: There are few signs of any economic transformation here. The people of Dalah are stuck in the mud. They live perched above putrid water, rubbish and sewage. There's no reliable electricity and little sign of the government. This is how millions of people live in Myanmar. | 07:35 |
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| VUNG DEIH LUN: "Every time, I'm thinking how long I have to live here? How long, how long? | 08:26 |
| Vung | Oh no, I can't stand with the power, like power cuts very often and the water was not clean". | 08:29 |
| Kindergarten exterior |
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| Kindergarten interior | SARA: Kindergarten teacher, Vung Deih Lun was shocked when she moved here two years ago. She could see that children on this side of the river didn't have the opportunities of those in downtown Yangon. | 08:42 |
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| VUNG DEIH LUN: "Here the children they have no money so they don't... they cannot get a good tuition and they cannot go to a good school. And for the teacher also, who... | 09:01 |
| Vung | How to say it?... They really need to have a heart for them". | 09:11 |
| Kindergarten activities | SARA: These children are the first to grow up in democracy in Myanmar for more than 50 years, but there's huge inequality. Less than 10% of poor children in Myanmar have the opportunity to attend preschool. | 09:16 |
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| VUNG DEIH LUN: "The reason for why we are here. We don't want them to be poor forever, so we want to direct them". | 09:44 |
| Children nap time | SARA: Almost one quarter of the children are underweight, more than 35% are stunted. These youngsters are ten times more likely than Australian children to die before the age of five. For Vung Deih Lun it's a victory every time she sees one of her students go on to primary school and excel. | 09:55 |
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| VUNG DEIH LUN: "Whenever I saw them on the stage, and they're taking a prize, | 10:21 |
| Vung | I am one proud teacher. Every time, I'm saying I'm in the right place and I am in the needed place. Every time I've got to remind myself". | 10:26 |
| Ah Moon jogging |
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| SARA: For some, the changes in Myanmar can't come fast enough. 23 year old Ah Moon doesn't want to be a teacher or work in the slums. She wants to be a global pop star and remarkably that's now possible. AH MOON MARIP: "It's everything. It's everything. | 10:44 |
| Ah Moon. Super: | Without music I don't know what I'm going to be like". | 11:05 |
| Ah Moon to rehearsal |
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| SARA: Ah Moon is part of a girl group called Me N Ma Girls. When they started out four years ago, they had to submit their song lyrics to the military censors. Now the band has an international recording contract. H MOON MARIP: "I think now | 11:30 |
| Ah Moon | A not only the youth, even like the older people in Burma, they start to relate to international culture and they can accept now". | 11:53 |
| Song clip. Super: | [Song] | 12:05 |
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| SARA: But this brand of girl power has stirred up a share of criticism. The dance moves, the outfits and the lyrics didn't fit the expectations of how young Burmese women should behave. | 12:14 |
| Me N Ma Girls rehearse |
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| AH MOON MARIP: "You had to look like white skin girl - cute - and we were just brown skin, strong, loud, crazy girls and that was the big problem for them". | 12:33 |
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| [Singing] | 12:47 |
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| SARA: These would-be stars have choices and opportunities that their mothers and grandmothers could not have imagined. Ah Moon has already graduated from university with a degree in Russian. | 12:55 |
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| [Singing] | 13:09 |
| Ah Moon | AH MOON MARIP: "I think it's because of my family. My family is very, very different from other families in Myanmar". | 13:19 |
| Ah Moon's father greets parishioners/ Inside church | SARA: Ah Moon's father is a Baptist pastor. The family comes from the Kachin ethnic minority in the north of the country. Despite the apparent conservatism, Ah Moon's father is supportive of his daughter's career. | 13:25 |
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| REV. JA NAW JUNIOR: "I told my daughter if someone criticises you, don't take any notice. | 13:47 |
| Rev. Ja Naw | Don't answer back. Just go on doing what you think is right. What's important is that one doesn't stray". | 13:52 |
| Ah Moon singing in church | SARA: Ah Moon knows that she's one of the fortunate few in Myanmar, able to make the most of the country opening up. If she'd been born into a poor family, her dreams of musical stardom would have been impossible. | 13:59 |
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| AH MOON MARIP: "I would be, you know, I would be like those girls for sure. | 14:27 |
| Ah Moon | At this age I would be like, yeah maybe a mother or struggling somewhere else, yes". | 14:31 |
| Yangon riverfront/ Warehouse | Music | 14:40 |
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| SARA: Only months ago this was a dilapidated river front warehouse. Now it's a flash new retail space, the venue of an expat networking event, for women at the top end of town who are helping to drive the change. | 14:46 |
| Vicky at networking event | Vicky Bowman is one of them. She first arrived in the 1990s and went on to become British Ambassador here. | 15:03 |
| Vicky. Super: | VICKY BOWMAN: "Yeah I mean I think the Myanmar businesses here are slightly frustrated by what they're seeing from the international community and the international business community, but I think probably they don't realise that businesses have choices to make. This is not the only country in the world where they can invest and they're going to be looking at rule of law, they're going to be looking at the costs, they're going to be looking at the commercial equation, whether or not they can get their product out of the country". | 15:20 |
| Vicky at networking event | SARA: Now Vicky Bowman is working for an NGO campaigning against corruption. She says business has been slowed by poor government decision making. | 15:454 |
| Vicky | VICKY BOWMAN: "But it's more than anything been a consequence of lack of electricity, lack of infrastructure, so those are some of the key problems that potential manufacturers now are saying that they would like to come in here, they would like to take advantage of Myanmar's cheaper labour, but they don't have the electricity. They can't run the diesel generator twelve months a year in their factories. It's too costly and it won't make them competitive". | 15:59 |
| Vicky and family enter gallery | SARA: Vicky Bowman is part insider and part outsider. She's married to a former Burmese political prisoner who's now a high profile artist. She knows more than most that change is slow and it's come at a high price. | 16:20 |
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| VICKY BOWMAN: "You get an awful lot of people coming in thinking this is the next frontier. It's a country which has probably up to sixty million people so it's very significant. I think companies who've come in over | 16:39 |
| Vicky | the last two years, most of them have realised they probably need to take things quite slowly because it's not straightforward". | 16:48 |
| Street shots | Music | 16:55 |
| Nay Aung into car with cash | SARA: This is how a lot of money moves in Myanmar - by car. It's estimated that only 5% of transactions are made through the outdated banking system. The rest are done like this, in cash and in person. Reform is stopping and starting but it's enough to lure young entrepreneurs prepared to come home to Myanmar and set up a business. | 17:04 |
| Nay Aung | NAY AUNG: "Oh the risk is very high. I don't think I slept very well in the first six months or the months leading up to it and I knew that if I share this with my family, I don't think they will agree. So actually I called my parents one week before I came back. So literally one week". | 17:32 |
| Nay Aung takes cash from safe | SARA: Nay Aung has established an online travel agency. The profits are adding up, but in the beginning he couldn't even find an office with adequate internet. NAY AUNG: [Oway Travel Company] "So what I had to do was I had to work | 17:50 |
| Nay Aung. Super: | at different coffee shops and I happen to find a really good place where they have the best internet access because they have connection to the government". | 18:12 |
| Nay Aung in office with Sara | SARA: Face to face dealings are still a very important part of doing business here, but it's worth the effort. The Myanmar tourism industry has grown by 92% in the past year and there's more growth expected. The economic fundamentals are starting to head in the right direction. | 18:23 |
| Travel company office | NAY AUNG: "I saw some underlying changes that could lead to reform. I wanted to come back so that I could position myself in industry that has | 18:46 |
| Nay Aung | an exponential potential to grow when the country opens up". | 18:57 |
| Monks walking |
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| SARA: Myanmar is moving forward in its own way. Deeply held traditions continue, but against the backdrop of a country which is modernising and changing. VICKY BOWMAN: "I think people in this country have had a huge amount of patience over the years and we have, you know had the sort of the occasional bursts of outrage, | 19:10 |
| Vicky Bowman | of demonstrations in 1974, in 1988, ‘96 and in 2007, but there is also an underlying fear and although in Rangoon now people are so much more confident and so much more prepared to speak their mind, out in the districts | 19:33 |
| Monks walking along road | the old habits die hard". SARA: While there's a veneer of order and conformity, there are divisions too. In several parts of the country Myanmar is at war with itself. Human rights abuses continue and the government has been in brutal conflict with ethnic groups such as the Royhingas, the Karen and the Kachin. | 19:51 |
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| VICKY BOWMAN: "So I think it's really important now not to forget that this is a country which still has ethnic conflicts in which people are being killed every week, | 20:14 |
| Vicky Bowman | both the army, the ethnic rebels, but also civilians and in particular in the north, those conflicts are very live. But even elsewhere in the country they're still quite tentative peace deals which have not really been cemented into a proper political framework". | 20:24 |
| Dr Thant. Super: | DR THANT MYINT-U: "Over the past 18 months the government and the leaders of all of the ethnic armed groups have reached initial ceasefire agreements or equivalent agreements. We're now in the middle of intensive discussions every week, every month on a national ceasefire agreement which will be the first signed in seventy years if it is signed". | 20:38 |
| Dalah | Music | 20:59 |
| Interior. Kindergarten | SARA: Back across the river in Dalah, the children at the Sunshine Kindergarten are getting ready for graduation. It only costs their parents three dollars a term to send them here but even that is big money in a neighbourhood like this one. "Do you worry about the future for these children because life is more difficult for poor children?" VUNG DEIH LUN: "That's right, that's right. I worry a lot. I'm worried for them. Some children | 21:30 |
| Vung. Super: | outside this village if they can continue... if they can continue, the government school, how to do his life, ah... no education, then he will not get a good job and his life is finished, you know. So I'm very worried for them". | 21:58 |
| Vung leading kindergarten song | SARA: Vung Deih Lun wants to continue teaching here even though she could get a much better paying job in Yangon. For her, money isn't important. | 22:17 |
| Vung | VUNG DEIH LUN: "Not important. Yeah, I really want to change the people in their life. I really want to open their eyes and open their heart". | 22:35 |
| Vung with husband and baby at home | SARA: Vung Deih Lun and her husband also have dreams for their own child, three month old Rebecca. They want her to learn and to have the best opportunities. VUNG DEIH LUN: "Even at three month I talk to her, I want to hear | 22:44 |
| Vung | back something from her, so it's really also given me a lesson. I have to listen from the children as well. She is precious to me and the children are also precious for their parent". | 23:06 |
| Yangon. Temple sculptures | Music | 23:19 |
| Pagoda | SARA: Myanmar is an experiment in motion. It's unclear whether the economic, social and political reforms will reach those most in need. DR THANT MYINT-U: "What I hope is that, you know, the economy will grow, we'll continue to see a more open political environment, | 23:36 |
| Dr Thant | but that we'll be able to learn lessons from the experiences of other countries and catch up in a way that actually benefits the majority of people here". | 23:57 |
| Me N Ma Girls music clip | [Singing] | 24:03 |
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| SARA: For now, there's hope for those who see Myanmar finally taking its place in the international community. | 24:19 |
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| [Singing] | 24:26 |
| Ah Moon | AH MOON MARIP: I want it to, I want to see the country is moving forward every day and I think the future is going to be better and brighter. | 24:35 |
| Shwedagon Pagoda GVs/ | [Singing] | 24:44 |
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| Reporter: Sally Sara Extra footage Me N Ma Girls | 25:11 |