Unsnug Plugs

The most unexpected difficulty of rural travel in Myanmar? Coaxing electric plugs to remain inserted into sockets.

When we arrive from other places we take for granted that we’ll be able to charge computers, phones, cameras and so on. It might occur to us to bring along a power pack or extra batteries to tide us over through the many, many spots in the country where electricity has yet to arrive. Once we do find a socket, we assume the little prongs will stay put. Wrong.

Sometimes the slots turn out to be too wide. Other times everything’s angled toward the floor and gravity works against us. Often the wall plate has gone missing, which means the heavy adaptor that we world travelers cannot live without drops to the ground because it has nothing to lean against.

So we miss our bus because our alarm didn’t go off because the outlet let go of the plug during the night. Or we never get the text that our friends sent about the meetup time because the connection got loose and the phone battery went bye-bye.

Traveling with duct tape might help us get a grip. But even that universal cure doesn’t always do the trick if the socket is too old and tired. Welcome to Myanmar!