Returnees filled with great hope - and some anxiety

Yangon

TEA shops were once among the few places in Myanmar during the country's repressive regime where neighbours could gather and talk in relative freedom about current events.

Htet Myet Oo, 25, a restaurateur who returned to his country from England in 2012, said he wanted to evoke that ethos when he opened the chic Rangoon Tea House in the country's commercial capital last year. His upscale customers still order the fragrant rice noodle and fish soup called mohinga served in traditional tea houses but now it is made with "locally sourced" ingredients and paired with chilled white wine.

Five years after Myanmar's military junta began the process of democratic reforms, the South-east Asian nation of 51 million people, once cut off from the world, is undergoing rapid-fire change. Just a few years ago, for example, the country had a cellph…