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Ceritalah | In sleepy Mawlamyine, Myanmar youths can’t wait to leave as city becomes shadow of its former self
- A former bustling British port city, Mawlamyine today is a far cry from its glory years in the 1800s
- Despite recent efforts by the authorities to boost the city’s infrastructure, the economy has not thrived and young residents yearn to leave in search of better jobs
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Mawlamyine (or Moulmein) in Myanmar is one of those Southeast Asian cities like Sandakan (Malaysia), Bacolod (Philippines) and Songkhla (Thailand) – where the past looms large but the present seems faded and unpromising. The kinds of places that young people yearn to leave in search of jobs and money.
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Home to just under 300,000 residents, the capital city of the three-million-strong Mon State has a slightly forlorn, neglected air. After all, its glory years were well over 150 years ago, between 1826 and 1852.
Back then, the British transformed a sleepy port city at the confluence of the Salween, Ataran and Gyaing Rivers into the capital of their Burmese possessions on the Tenasserim coast.
Present-day Mawlamyine is a six-hour overland journey from Yangon. It used to be a much more arduous trip, but improvements in the national motorways and several new bridges have brought the two closer.
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However, that has not led to a significant increase in industries or jobs. Instead, it seems to have made it easier for people to leave.
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