In these little encounters, ‘security’ seems a mere façade, a spectacle of a frontier city being secured and readied for business and investments, and a reflection, perhaps, of what’s happening to the country on a wider scale. For one looking at Yangon from the outside, this facade of security justified the proliferation of new firms, more guards, more CCTV, ripe for frontier market investment, ripe for Aung San Suu Kyi’s plea to the investing world in her keynote speech for an investment summit:

‘As Southeast Asia’s final frontier market – final and best – we offer a world of opportunities. Investment opportunities are everywhere in Myanmar, some are there to see, and others are waiting to be found.’

Which begs the question, whose security is at stake in this ‘frontier’ Myanmar?

I took U Hla out for a taste of air-conditioned mohinga in the hyper-modern Sule Square shopping centre. Security guards seemed to outnumber customers in some parts of the mall. We noticed crony conglomerates with wealth from natural resource concessions “earned” through military connections, legitimizing said wealth through plush hotels, KTVs, restaurants, bars, and a profusion of other businesses serving an emerging elite middle class. ‘It tastes wrong, too cold, too expensive, sorry you bought this’, U Hla frowned.

We spoke about his family. He, like so many other working-class people that I met, said he used to live downtown. Since 2012, they’ve been forced by soaring prices to move. He now travels downtown, four hours round-trip, every single day when the traffic is bad, which is more and more often. Other guards share similar stories like U Hla – a tragic irony, because the rise of security is a symptom of what has displaced their families. ‘I used to live near the Bo Myat Htun,’ he tells me.

That is a large north-south road that intersects with Strand and Merchant, now gentrified, with elite new cafes, restaurants, and bars. A family I know still lives in a big heritage house on that very street. They pay 200 dollars per month for that large house, and rent out single rooms for nothing less than 800 dollars each. It wasn’t clear who exactly they were renting from, I got the impression the home was technically owned by the government or an official with ‘crony’ links. They did admit that while housing prices rise elsewhere, their home would always remain a vestige of old military links, as gifts for the families and friends of generals. As I understood, some downtown homes still retain such links, and nobody from the new NLD government or any public office comes knocking. But for a majority of downtown homes without ‘crony’ links, living downtown was no longer an option, either because it’s too expensive due to ongoing gentrification, or because it’s too lucrative not to profit from the same process, as Izzy Rhoads has found.

What do you think needs to be secured by all these security guards, I asked U Hla?

“Our lives!”

I understand what he meant. Since 2015 property prices have soared alongside exciting market transitions. News reports show residents getting pushed out of old business centres in order to make way for new malls, banks, and apartments (often funded by criminal profits earned on the country’s peripheries and laundered in Yangon’s urban core). Evictions are rampant, both downtown and in the suburbs, as slum dwellers and squatters are displaced in order for construction firms to build high-rise residences.

A frontier economy has boosted gentrification and demands for heritage structures: new start-ups refurbish them as offices and Airbnb rentals. This gentrification makes families like U Hla’s, who lived downtown for decades, unable to afford their homes. But some welcome these efforts, including middle to upper-middle class Burmese homeowners who have petitioned the YHT (Yangon Heritage Trust) for renovations. I spoke to a few: they have taken the quick money to move out while they can, because they believe they may simply be expelled by the city authorities at some later date. Meanwhile, some ‘frontier’ investors I spoke to, have suggested (to my shock) that, if Myanmar is to develop, many of these old ‘heritage’ landscapes must go.

This facade of security breaks down further when we see Yangon’s road and drainage conditions as poignantly described here on the Tea Circle by Aung Khant. While the city and its commercial interests are made ‘safe’ with CCTV and private security, pedestrians are endangered every single day by damaged sidewalks, unsafe construction sites, or simply the next speeding car, as well as open drainage ditches and lidless potholes, much like various urban street in my own country. Clogged drains flood streets, and pedestrians cross flooded streets with great apprehension during the rainy seasons. Just walking down the Strand road, one observes how precarity engulfs the downtown pedestrian as they look up to see massive blocks of cement, suspended dangerously from construction sites on top of crowded streets where men, women, children, and street animals rest under tea house sheds. If you look up in concern for too long, you risk stumbling into massive manholes potholes below. Stepping to the side risks being hit by a car, and stepping to the other side, you might hit some of the poshest places in town where few can afford a meal.

In the thrall and buzz of rapid development, street life in downtown Yangon portrays all the remnants of an old world mixed with sights from a city coming of age amidst frontier commercialization. Workers there still take afternoon naps or laze around under the street awnings heritage buildings and big banks when business is slow at midday. The streets are always lively, bustling with human activity. Old library and archive books about revolution, poetry, communism, and British administrative records find their way into the street vendors’ stalls where they remain largely unread, except perhaps by occasional foreign visitors. Youngsters reclaim previously unused spaces in the city, beautifying and making it their own. The underpass of the Dagon flyover is one example, previously unnoticeable, now starkly graffitied, enlivened by hip hop dancers practising as an appreciative evening audience gather around drinking tea.

Outside the hospital, where I chat with U Hla, security guards sit outside drinking tea us usual as well.

I promise to bring U Hla ဖန်စီလက်ဖက်ရည် (fancy tea) from Rangoon Tea House: he refuses. ‘The best tea is here,’ he says. He takes me to a stall at the back end of the hospital, giving me a tour of the children’s ward along the way. We watch as people flock into corridors and sit on the streets outside, waiting for an available bed. Fifteen tiny beds crammed into one room, all tied to bottles of saline and oxygen masks. We watch as a father carries a child on one arm, a saline bottle on the other. Relatives hover around, massaging their legs, chasing away mosquitos, flies, dogs and cats wandering into the units. Nurses run sweating from one bed to the next, in rooms lacking fans or ACs. Sick children sleep, delirious, as TVs and families make noise around them. Definitely not the health system one would expect in a ‘secured’ capital city ready for the ongoing Covid19 crisis.

“Anyone can come here from anywhere here”, U Hla says, spitting blood-red betel pulp on the hospital wall as I dodge for cover. Sure enough, no one ever stopped me.