Khin Omar Win and Brett Melzer were in their mid 20s when they met in Yangon, Myanmar in 1997. Both were seeking adventure, and neither dreamed that in a few years they’d have a hugely successful tourism company, Eastern Safaris. What started as a single hot air balloon doing flights over Bagan’s temples turned into two lodges and hot air ballooning in Chile. After Myanmar, they went to Bhutan, where they now have 12-suite Gangtey Lodge in the stunning Gangtey (Phobjikha) Valley. It certainly wasn’t easy, but Omar and Brett say they never planned too far ahead—and that’s what made them able to weather obstacles. The couple, who now live in Melbourne, have three kids, with Eastern Safaris making four. Here, Omar and Brett talk their Bhutan lodge, responsible tourism, and knowing when to move on.
Omar and Brett meet in Myanmar
Omar: I came back to Yangon in December 1996 at 25. This was when the country first opened up. It had this fantastic feeling of hope and was a really exciting time. I had been offered a job in China and was waiting for a visa, and while I was in Myanmar I was offered another job, so I stayed.
Brett: I arrived in September 97 at 29. I was looking for adventure. I’d been on holiday to Burma a year or two earlier and was immediately struck by the frontier feel. I was desperate to get back and see what opportunities there were. I met Omar my second day in the country by gatecrashing a dinner party.
Omar: *Laughs*. Good Burmese girls were in the house by 9pm, so when Brett and I were dating, he would always have to take me home by 9pm. Then we’d get on the phone, but the phones would be tapped. We’d hear this tap, knowing that military intelligence were listening in.
What Yangon was like in the late 90s
Omar: Yangon really was in a time warp. Walking around, it was like stepping back in time. It was a beautiful colonial city, very leafy, with very little development. Architecturally, it was stunning. All those beautiful buildings—the teak houses, the colonial mansions—were quite untouched. Electricity was not great in those days, nor was the water system. There were hardly any cars on the street because everything was so restricted. To get a car import permit you had to be connected, and on the black market it was $100K, on top of the cost of a car. You could have a bike, and it would increase in value with age. Same with cars. People would be walking around with diamond earrings and real jewelry, with their savings in gold.
Brett: There was such a burgeoning feeling in Myanmar, and you had access that you wouldn’t have in any other country, because it was just opening up for the first time.
Omar: We were in our 20s, yet we were able to get meetings with government ministers, very easily, just pop in and have a cup of tea. The whole country, because it had been closed off to the rest of the world, it was like a blank slate.
Hoping tourism would take off
Omar: Tourism was really unique in that you didn’t have to have connections to set up a hotel. For two young people like ourselves, we were able to run a business without much interference, and we were able to make a direct impact on the people who worked for us. At that time, Burmese business people did not think of tourism as a money-making industry—it was all about gems or teak. We did not know tourism was going to explode, although we always had hope.
Brett: The potential for tourism was immediately obvious to us. We thought, if it happened, that would be amazing, but we didn’t really know—we didn’t think that far ahead.
Both: We were young. It was an adventure.
Starting Balloons over Bagan
Omar: We started Balloons over Bagan in 1999 and sold it in 2016. The motivation for us both being in Myanmar and setting up the business wasn’t purely financial. The purpose was the adventure. I always wanted to work in development, to make a difference. So, we set up this business where we focused on development but also created a business that was successful. That was why we stayed at times when other companies, focusing on the bottom line, would have left. Our purpose and mission were different. The Balloons Over Bagan staff had been with us for ages. Our most senior person in Bagan joined us when he was 18. It was, for me, like we gave birth to the company. It was almost like being a parent. You fall in love, you get married, you have children, and the child to me was the business. The company got bigger and bigger and outgrew us. We started off with just one small balloon and eight crew. Last year, we flew 22,000 people and the company now has a fleet of 15 large balloons and well over 200 employees.
Brett: I think it was time. It was 17 years, and it was a very different product at the end. It was commercial and corporate, in a successful way, but some of that original passion started to fade away. When we started Balloons over Bagan, we didn’t think too much about the potential or the future, although you knew it was there. If you made a business plan upon what might be—well, the people who came in and did that all failed.
Overcoming obstacles and moving on
Brett: The biggest challenges were with the Malikha Lodge project (in northern Myanmar, near the Indian border). We opened in early 2007 and sold on 1 January 2009. This project was the first time we had dealings directly with the military. It was a 10-room lodge, hardly a massive development, but we were engaging with local ethnic groups that the government was keen to keep under wraps.
Omar: These were battles you could win only if you went for corruption. They would demand things, and then they would offer you something else. I went into a meeting once. We wanted to have a car permit for the hotel. And the guy said, “OK, you give me a car and I’ll give you a permit.” Then he took us to another room and pointed on a map to a national park. He said, “I can get permits for you for gold mining, but you need to give me a cut.” Brett and I just looked at each other. We ended up buying two elephants instead, because we just couldn’t get the car. We needed vehicles for client experiences, and that was our solution. We spent $8,000 to get these elephants; they had been working in a wood mill, and one of the staff walked them over 300km through the jungle to our site.
The space where we built Malikha Lodge was just jungle. Elephants used to bring wood to the site, and people would hand carry in boulders. Everything was done by hand. It took us three years to build 10 rooms, a back of house, and a main lodge. I remember it took three years to get enough thatch for 10 rooms, because we’d order it from the local villagers, wait for them to plant it and then harvest it. We’d never built a hotel before. We made mistakes, and we learned from them. It was very, very tough when we sold Malikha Lodge. We’d started something and weren’t ready to give it up. But we did not want to play the game. The military wanted us to change the hotel’s name. They wanted us to change the uniforms from black (the hill tribe’s color) to green (the military color). They wanted a hotel for them to use. We decided we could either fight it or move on, so we went to Bhutan.
On starting again in Bhutan:
Brett: One of the great things about Balloons over Bagan was the people we met. One was Adrian Zecha, the founder of Aman Resorts. He invited us into Bhutan to look into ballooning. This enabled us to explore the different valleys, and on one of those explorations we came across Gangtey Valley. We had built a balloon in the UK, shipped it to Calcutta, and brought it overland to Bhutan. We ended up having to build some accommodations, initially for pilots, but then Yeshey Norbu, our partner at the time, said, Bhutan is opening up, why don’t you build a hotel here? That coincided with the closing of Malikha Lodge.
Omar: Gangtey Valley was pristine. Subsistence farmers were living there, and so by building a hotel, we were able to create jobs that enabled the local young people to stay. And we still have that balloon! It’s in a garage at the hotel. We got permission to fly in Gangtey, and then we got sidetracked building the hotel because we needed accommodations. The eight rooms that Amankora had there weren’t going to give us enough clients for balloons, so we decided to build our own hotel. While we were building the hotel, our permission for ballooning expired, the government changed, and when we went to reapply, they didn’t recognize the permit and we couldn’t get another one.
How Eastern Safaris practices responsible tourism
Omar: When we first started out with Balloons over Bagan, it was a time when businesses were businesses and NGOs were NGOs. Could we set up a business that would also bring development? In Myanmar at that time it was very difficult for the UN or NGOs to have access to villages. Through our business, we were able to do a lot of the development work that we wanted to do. Eastern Safaris is 50% business focused, 50% development/sustainability focused, like I've always wanted. When considering a project, we always ask if the location had the possibility of being commercially successful and bringing development to the area. We hired people without hotel experience and employed people from the local area. We ended up having fantastic service, a sense of ownership, authenticity, and people who would stay.
At Gangtey Lodge in Bhutan, many of our activities have a donation side. We work with a local monastery, the shedra. A lot of younger monks go there because their families can’t support them, so we support the shedra through client activities. We do a breakfast experience and a blessing experience, and part of that cost is donated to the monastery and given to the monks. Guests can go and donate robes (we buy them in bulk, and clients can donate them directly to the monks and get a blessing). We have beautiful dining experiences outside of a 17th-century temple, and we’ll have dancers from the monastery to whom we donate the money. Since October 2013, we’ve raised US$53,780, which has gone to support the shedra’s new classrooms, dorms, books, classroom equipment, and temples. We do these community projects at startup before we even make a profit.
Previously with Balloons over Bagan, after the six-month operating season finished, we spent the remaining six months doing community work—building schools, relief work, and participating in community campaigns. We’ve been able to impact a lot of people by doing so. And, because all of our staff in Myanmar are from the local community, every single year we can ask them where we should donate. Some years it could be water, like when there were severe droughts in the villages one spring. We got a fire truck, filled it with water, and went and donated it. As part of ballooning training, all of our staff are trained in fire safety and first aid. And because they live in the villages, a lot of them are now volunteers for the Red Cross, both as first aid officers and as volunteer firefighters.
Our expertise as tourism operators is all about logistics: it’s about moving people and materials around. When Cyclone Nargis (2008) hit the country it affected the tourism industry hard. However, with the free time tourism companies now had due to low numbers of tourists, we all focused our expertise on relief work, raising money from clients overseas; this money was crucial during that gap of about two months when the government was focused on an election and did not allow NGOs to access affected areas. We in the tourism industry had the infrastructure and the vehicles, so we could bring in the money and buy the materials, food, and clothing that were needed. Our staff were skilled enough to be able to go into the delta and effectively distribute food and clothing. In this situation, we were really able to use our skills to do development work.
On some of their proudest moments.
Omar: Seeing our teams develop and winning awards of recognition. Many come from small villages in remote areas, and when we’re recognized with awards, it is a recognition that their standard of service is world class. For the construction team in Bhutan, for example, or in the villages with Mahlika Lodge, they built these lodges by hand, and then we were recognized in the Conde Nast Traveler Hot List. It’s when those things happen that we’re just amazed. That’s the proudest moment.
Brett: Every time there’s a picture in some shop or office, or some poster somewhere of balloons flying over Bagan. There's even an image of Balloons over Bagan on one of the IKEA posters in Melbourne now. BOB is an idea that we came up with and implemented, and now it’s an iconic image. That’ll never go away, even though we don’t own it anymore.
Omar: We were in Santiago last year, and there was a picture of our balloons from Myanmar printed on a table top.
Brett: That makes me feel proud. It’s something we can show the kids. We put on Facebook a picture of us and the children with the IKEA poster.
Omar: Our kids are 17, 15, and 11. Every single time I was pregnant, we were also buying a balloon. And so every time we got a new balloon, the staff would ask if I was pregnant.
