Aung San Suu Kyi’s first year running Myanmar has been a letdown

ASTRONOMICAL downtown rents, power cuts, traffic that gets worse by the week: these are Yangon’s growing pains. But they pale in comparison with its growing pleasures: cranes everywhere, a steady stream of new businesses and, most important, optimistic citizens. Signs of progress abound, some flashy—swish new restaurants and hotels—and others mundane—co-ordinated bus routes that have ended the lunatic system whereby the packed vehicles of competing firms raced from stop to stop to snaffle the waiting customers.