

On the obsolescence of guidebooks; traveling in Myanmar - Hooke
http://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2015/01/28/confoundingly-picturesque/

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Uehreka
I went to Myanmar a year and a half ago. Easily the most valuable thing I
brought with me was my iPhone, loaded up with iTravel, a free app that
downloads entire countries worth of Wikivoyage entries for offline viewing
(Although I spent most of my downtime reading Orwell's _Burmese Days_ ).

If you're trying to make a point about the uselessness of paper travel guides
in the modern world, you couldn't pick a better destination than Myanmar.
Since the opening of the borders to foreigners in 2012, the economy and the
state of technology has been advancing at a rapid clip.

Even WikiVoyage had a hard time keeping up. There was copy in the Myanmar
article stating that WiFi was not available anywhere, and that the only way of
getting on to the internet was through government sanctioned/monitored
internet cafes. When I arrived (10/2013) there was free WiFi in almost every
hotel I stayed at.

My general advice for anyone going to Myanmar is to spend a couple days
getting blown away by Pagan and then do some hiking and shopping around Inle
Lake. But if you want to know how to get around and where to stay, I feel like
I'd be of little use. The best (or at least most advisable) bus routes and
hotels currently running probably opened in the time since I left.

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collyw
I had never seen Wikivoyage before, but I have used Wikitravel. The two sites
seem to contain very similar information. Are they related? Which one is
usually more up to date?

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Uehreka
Wikitravel is sponsored by ads, Wikivoyage is funded by Wikimedia. Wikivoyage
is basically a fork of Wikitravel that happened a couple years ago when
contributors to Wikitravel started getting concerned about the company that
was running it. Since a lot of the contributors (if not consumers) of
Wikitravel made the move, I generally trust Wikivoyage to be more up to date.

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dharma1
I have been running a couple of tech businesses in Myanmar for 2 years. Hit me
up if you are visiting or want to know more about the country.

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maxwin
If any HN reader is visiting Myanmar, let's meetup. My email is in profile.

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jo3c
cool! will be in Mandalay on Feb 19th :)

