Gmail, Yahoo mail and Myanmar

Visitors to Myanmar would still remember the feeling of totally cut off from their friends and families outside Myanmar (Burma). Telephone call to foreign countries from Myanmar (Burma) is quite expensive. Mobile phones are not readily available until recently (when the government introduces a new prepaid GSM mobile phone cards), and all those popular web mails are blocked in Myanmar. If you are using Gmail or Yahoo mail as your primary contact email, you are now in deep trouble. You cannot access these mails from Myanmar, and you are totally disconnected. All you will see is a welcome screen of “This website is blocked by your ISP”. I am deeply sorry.

However, please keep calm. You are not totally disconnected. There are ways to connect with your friends via your favorite mail. Myanmar people are genius at improvisation when resources are scarce. Email and internet is no exception. All you need to do is head to a local internet cafe which is now quite easy to find in Yangon (Rangoon) and Mandalay (but still a rarity in other cities), and ask the owner that you want to use your gmail. More often than not, he will be willing to show you how to bypass the ISP ban on gmail. Indeed, almost all the internet cafes in Myanmar install or provide some program or proxy website to bypass the ISP ban on gmail. (They have to. Otherwise, there won’t be any customer at all). Usually, this is done by a popular “Freedom” software which is a proxy software to bypass the ISP firewall, or by using https protocol in gmail. For reasons nobody knows, Myanmar ISP does not block this https protocol from Gmail. (Or may be they cannot). Anyway, until now, users of gmail in Myanmar can still bypass the ISP ban on gmail by these methods. (Although it can changed overnight). However, due to a limited bandwidth of internet connection in Myanmar, use of a proxy software is painfully slow, and cut off many time. So it is better to use the https protocol in gmail. It is also more secure. For Yahoo mail, one solution is to use the mobile version of the Yahoo mail, as it is not blocked in Myanmar.

Although the internet in Myanmar is painfully slow, and most popular webmails blocked, it really is a relief for everyone that you are still accessible to your email, and hence the world.

24 thoughts on “Gmail, Yahoo mail and Myanmar”

  1. So is it possible to access the www in Yangon? I’m taking an online course and don’t want to get behind on my assignments while in Myanmar. Will I be able to connect to my school’s server at an Internet cafe?

    1. Yes. I believe your school server is not blocked and would be accessible from within Myanmar. However, if your server uses ports other than port 80, it might have some problems. Please also bear in mind that your internet cafe might also install screen capture software, so whatever you see in internet cafe, be careful.

  2. I am Myanmar.I totally know what are you saying.MPT and Bagancyber bandwidth are really suck.We need good ISP.
    Is there anyone who can provide good ISP in Myanmar.
    Like wire less connection.

    1. Some internet cafes might if you are their regular customer. Most will not. Internet speed is a bit faster (read less slow) but not much change.

  3. How is the e-mail situation in Myanmar now ? I’ll be coming to the country in May, and am anxious to know whether hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo Mail are usable ?

    1. Emails are accessible through proxies. For gmail, use https instead of http. For yahoo, use m.yahoo.com (Yahoo! Mobile). I don’t know about hotmail as Myanmar people rarely use hotmail.

  4. I’m in Myanmar right now. I’m finding that in most major centres where tourists go, a slowish form of broadband is available (eg. Yangon, Mandalay, NuangShwe, Bagan).

    As for access to email sites, anything with the term ‘mail’ (and the other majors) needs a proxy for access.

    I’ve found that when shown the term ‘site access denied’, the net cafe ‘manager’ will use a proxy to get one ‘hooked’. I’ve yet to have any problems.

    – – –

    As for using a laptop, I’ve seen it quite often. So, it’s merely a matter of negotiating same with the net cafe ‘manager’.

    Cheers

  5. hello, iam coming to myanmar for few months and would be staying at traders hotel which is providing broadband internet. would i be able to open my gmail and yahoo sites? i have read the contents above and i wonder if the hotel internet can also provide proxy sites in case if iam not able to open gmail and yahoo on my own. What about facebook? can u operate ur facebook a/c easily? thanx:)

  6. မဂၤလာပါ။သူငယ္ခ်င္းမ်ားကုိၾကိဳဆိုပါတယ္။ကြ်န္ေတာ္ကသူငယ္ခ်င္းမက္ပါတယ္။

  7. မဂၤလာပါ။သူငယ္ခ်င္းမ်ားကုိၾကိဳဆိုပါတယ္။ကြ်န္ေတာ္ကသူငယ္ခ်င္းေတြကုိခင္ခ်င္ပါတယ္။ကြ်န္ေတာ္gmailလိပ္စာက
    ့aungzawoogtc007.gmail@com ပါ။ခင္ခ်င္သူမ်ားဆက္သြယ္ႏုိင္ပါတယ္။

  8. Hello Guys!
    I’m going to Minbu, and I would like to know if there is mobile internet there.

    Also, if gmail, hotmail and facebook are being blocked.
    Somebody could tell me?

    Thanks for the help!

  9. hello

    My friend is travelling in Burma (Mandalay) im not sure if its hard to access the internet there?
    bc he never get back to me.

    1. There are many internet cafes in Mandalay and gmail or yahoo mail is not blocked anymore. And internet cafe fees are also very cheap.

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