“My anxiety grew as I watched people stepping on and off what looked to me like moving stairs, and realized we would have to do the same. As far as I knew there was only one escalator in the whole of Burma, in Rangoon. It was quite a tourist attraction, and I had once gone to look at it, but discovered that it had not been in working order for years.”

—Pascal Knoo Thwe, From the Land of Green Ghosts: A Burmese Odyssey, 2002.