Myanmar is keeping its weird time zone

Face of black windup alarm clock. WIKICOMMONS/SUNLADDER

The experience is a familiar one. You fly from Bangkok to Yangon, land, pull out your smart phone and reset the clock to 30 minutes earlier.

Myanmar is one of a small group of countries that retains unusual offsets from Greenwhich Mean Time (Nepal is another, with a 15-minute offset).

Enter the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, or Asean. Member state Malaysia, which chairs Asean this year, had proposed synchronizing the clocks of all 10 countries in the grouping (which includes Myanmar) to eight hours ahead of GMT, according to AFP. As it stands, there are four different time zones in the region.

However, the proposal, which has come up in the past, was “shelved” on Sunday because Asean foreign ministers attending the 26th regional summit “could not come to an agreement on it,” the wire service reported.

Asean is in the final planning stages for the much-vaunted but little understood Asean Economic Community, which is supposed to enhance connectivity in the region. Having the same time zone could create business benefits by matching clocks with China and making it so stock markets and banks are operating on more uniform hours, AFP reported.

Sounds like a great idea right? So of course it’s not happening.

Malaysian Foreign Minister Anifah Aman told reporters at the end of the summit in Kuala Lumpur that some member states had “different views on this matter and the meeting decided to put the matter in abeyance”.

Singapore Foreign Minister K. Shanmugam said some Asean members needed more time to think about the idea, according to AFP.

“We came to the conclusion that it’s not something that we can take further right now, but we should continue looking at it,” he said.

Looks like we won’t be changing our alarm clocks in Yangon any time soon.