Just when I thought that the USA was the only country stubborn enough not to switch to the metric system, we came to Burma. Here miles and gallons abound, unfortunately, I've been living in the rest of SE Asia for far to long and now have trouble conceiving what a mile really consists of. What happened to the kilometers?
To make matters more confusing, weight is not in ounces or pounds but rather in a strange unit called a viss. Luckily, we're not buying to much fruit or meat for this to be an issue.
Perhaps the strangest of all is the lek. This is a unit for counting and commonly used for money. It is consistent with 100,000. This leaves me with a multitude of questions such as: What system are they using where 5 zeros constitutes a unit? What are the other units like? Do they break it up into 2.5 zeros, 5 and 10 zeros?
I wonder what other interesting units will present themselves as we delve deeper into the life of Burma.
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