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The BBC last month featured an undercover report detailing Myanmar's Sin City and its “anything goes” mentality that includes the likes of gambling, drugs, prostitution and various black markets. The city even hosts a popular Thai transvestite show.
They visit Special Region Number 4 (also known as Mongla) along the border of China, an area the BBC correspondent points out Myanmar’s central government has virtually zero control over.
The Economist once described Mongla as such:
WITH its hill-tribe villages and opium warlords, the Shan state of northern Myanmar is among the least developed regions of Asia. But as you approach the Chinese border, the landscape is suddenly transformed. Like a hallucination, a garish town of concrete, neon, casinos and night-clubs appears. “Welcome to Mongla Special Region No. 4”, a billboard proclaims.
Remote and once dirt-poor Mongla has been reborn as a tourist destination, a process that started in 1989, when Myanmar's army reached a ceasefire and autonomy deal with the Shan. The local warlord, a Shan Chinese named Sai Leun (also known as Lin Mingxian), built Mongla with an unorthodox mixture of opium profits and technical aid from China's neighbouring province of Yunnan.
The once closed off nation of Myanmar is dramatically coming out of the closet in recent years. Gambling could soon move from the black market to the open market as the Southeast Asian nation looks to reinvent its once struggling economy.
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Myanmar, also known as Burma, began enacting new government reforms upon transitioning to a new administration in 2011.
Since then, the government has even assembled a National Human Rights Commission that consists of 15 members from various backgrounds.
And now, in 2014, we are learning that Myanmar could become the next Asian nation to legalize casino gambling.
“We haven’t issued any licences for casinos yet because it is still considered a type of illegal gambling,” U Myo Win Nyunt, a director from the Ministry of Hotels and Tourism, told the Myanmar Times.
He added the country’s Ministry of Home Affairs is currently drafting a bill on gambling.
The Myanmar Times also reported that Philweb Corp, which operates several Internet cafes in the Philippines, is considering operating in the country should gambling become legalized.
- Jagajeet Chiba, Gambling911.com
