YANGON, Myanmar (AP) — Zaw Zaw, one of Myanmar's most successful and notorious businessmen, likes to pick his way at odd hours around the hulking skeleton of his new hotel, rising beside Yangon's main airport road.
The 366-room Novotel holds a story of how one man, who remembers being too poor to afford a soccer ball, built an empire by befriending the military government in what was one of the most oppressive and isolated countries on earth; and how, as Myanmar opens up, he is quickly breaking with the past to embrace a prosperous, cosmopolitan future in which one thing seems certain: He will not lose.
"I am friends with everybody," Zaw Zaw says, a big smile spreading across his youthful face.
___
EDITOR'S NOTE — This story is part of "Portraits of Change," a yearlong series by The Associated Press examining how the opening of Myanmar after decades of military rule is — and is not — changing life in the long-isolated Southeast Asian country.
___
The 45-year-old tycoon, who built his fortune capitalizing on Myanmar's old networks of patronage and power, has demonstrated an agility in reconfiguring his business — and image — to suit a new global audience, and at a speed few have matched. As the country emerges from a half century of military rule, his Max Myanmar Group is on track to more than double revenues, according to data he has not made public before.