They are of Keng Tung. Keng Tung is also known as Kyaing Tong. I...

They are of Keng Tung. Keng Tung is also known as Kyaing Tong. I did enquire about travelling to Lashio and Mong La but was told it takes half a day so couldn't be bothered. Mong La was very dangerous i heard as it is near the Chinese border and many fugitives from China live there.

Some of the people are very poor. Many live in wooden shacks. I remembered seeing a young girl with 2 kids at the hot spring. The older one looks around 4 years old and my friend asked the girl how old she was.... 17 which meant she had her first kid at 13. We left a bunch of food for them.

There were quite a few fancy houses. I was told they were mostly involved in the drug trade. Tachilek (Border town next to Thailand) had so many of them. I even saw a few Mercedes and BMWs. The Myanmar citizens are allowed to cross the border into Chiang Rai (Thailand) by just showing their identity card however they can only go a limited distance which gets you to a shopping complex with a Big C (Thai version of Tesco). Many Myanmar people go there to eat KFC lol.

You definitely need a local partner to do business in Myanmar. They are quite against the Chinese doing business there so i would imagine the same would be true for foreign company. I am quite sure MYL would be partnering with a local.

As long as they provide jobs to the locals i can't see why the local people would be against. However, they need to be careful on the environmental impact as most of the locals are involved in agriculture. The government is also quite reliant on royalties and taxes from mining since they can't really tax the poor.

Overall i think if MYL has a suitable local partner with ties to the military government, Badwin will go forward no matter what the locals think. There are plus and minuses for each type of government.