The global business and economic leaders (and the media) who attend meetings of the World Economic Forum are used to five-star hotels, world-class dining, and understated luxury. And for their current meeting, the WEF has brought them all to... Naypyitaw, Myanmar. What is this shit?
The whole god damn city of Naypyitaw, Myanmar is less than a decade old, constructed out of basically nothing, because Myanmar's leaders thought it was better situated, strategically speaking, than the old capital. Just bask in this recap of Naypyitaw's rich history: "Naypyidaw has a short history, having been founded on a greenfield site in the shrubland some 3 kilometres (1.9 mi) west of Pyinmana, and approximately 320 kilometres (200 mi) north of Yangon, with construction starting in 2002."
Sounds like some amazing former shrubland. Just a few months ago, all of these people were in Davos.
There is not one decent Michelin-starred restaurant nor luxury upscale brothel in all of Naypyitaw! What are all these WEF attendees supposed to do? Of course they're all being very polite about it, but it only takes a glance at the Wall Street Journal's story about the meeting to tell that all these titans of business are silently seething at this god damn backwater they've been forced to bunker down in:
This week, Naypyitaw's hotels were hastily installing new ATMs just hours ahead of the start of the forum to ensure delegates would be able to access cash... WEF's famous after-hours networking events may be limited because Naypyitaw has virtually no night life to speak of...
The down-to-earth WEF style for this meeting appears to have disappointed some delegates, one of whom complained about the lack of a cappuccino machines, while others said tiles in hotel showers were broken. "It's not exactly luxury travel," said one delegate from the U.K.
The delegates will of course not let their inability to get a decent cappuccino in this godforsaken shithole to distract them from improving the state of the world by engaging business, political, academic and other leaders of society to shape global, regional and industry agendas.
[WSJ. Action photo of a businessman at work in dynamic Naypyitaw: Flickr]