Though it's not likely that the Burma secret police watch your web activities with any scrutiny, and though a rumour of screenshots taken of every computer every five minutes seems contrived, I thought it would be most prudent to save some thoughts until I was safely out of the country. It is, after all, a country where people are jailed for decades simply for delivering democratic messages. Perhaps their spies are everywhere.
So, Burma, nice place. It's an empire, really: though most people couldn't place this country on a world map, it has a language completely different than the Thai, Hindi, and Chinese ones surrounding it, a script that looks like alien symbols, a population double that of Canada, and lots and lots of natural resources. Hard to tell if it should be relegated to that list of "Countries That Would Have Been Better Off if the British Never Left", but ever since the military dictatorship jailed and dismantled the winning democratic party in the 1980s, the West has imposed economic sanctions. This puts Myanmar in the proud company of Cuba, Iran, and North Korea.
It also presents some quirks that are unknown on the rest of the otherwise straightforward SE Asia traveller's circuit. There are no ATMs in the country; travellers need to make sure they have enough brand-new, un-creased $100 Benjamin Franklins to last them the trip. You exchange about half your money to the local kyat (obviously pronounced chat), since prices indescriminately alternate between dollars and kyat. You check into a hotel and pay for the night in dollars, then walk over to their restaurant and buy your meal in kyat. The government exchange rate for kyat is about 6 to the dollar. On the black market the rate hovers around 800. And it is the filthiest money I have ever handled.
With this in mind, I was expecting to get off the plane in a place that resembled Europe circa 1300. Instead, I was welcomed onto paved streets with streetlights, sidewalks, office towers, and a faded air of English regalty. Most Asian nations grumblingly do business with the oppresive regime, so there's no lack of electronics, vehicles, or crappy Chinese goods, even if there are no Mastercard and McDonalds. This all sort of turned my world upside-down at first, since Myanmar is a country with economic sanctions that is visibly much more prosperous than Nepal, which receives aid, and tourists, from everywhere. Furthermore, from my best understanding, China's violent suppression of protests, atrocious human rights violations, and unwavering single-party system seem of equal severity as that of Myanmar, but we've elected to punish this mysterious place with sanctions that don't work. Well done. And despite all that, the people love foreigners.
I flew up to the city of Myitkyina, in Kachin State in the north of the country, with the intention of taking a slow boat down the country's lifeblood, the Ayerwaddy River. It didn't come as a surprise that a two-day section of the river was closed to all passenger transit due to fighting with the Kachin Independence Army. It was safe enough to take a bouncing, British-era train halfway down the river to Katha, and continue the adventure from there. Maybe it was for the best, for sleeping "Deck Class" entailed camping out on a cold metal floor in an open-air galley that looked like a refugee camp, and I'm not sure I could have taken another night of it. It was a nice ride though, a great view of local river life. And I'll have you know that the ferry only ran aground on a shallow sand bar once in the entire trip.
The Kachin are one of the seven big minority groups in Myanmar, and I was told they have the third largest rebel army against the government. All the rebel groups hold the border regions.
A bomb went off in Myitkyina a week before I arrived (impossible for me to have known about this while I was in the country since no one seems to know anything about anywhere else in Myanmar). The rebels would appear to be a threat, until a Kachin guy explained that the site of the explosion was a very important Kachin park. The city is 70% Kachin, most of whom are sympathetic to the rebel's cause. So did they really set off the bomb? A man I was talking to told me that he believed in the Union of Myanmar, and the rebels were fighting for more rights and autonomy. In fact, most solutions to the country's problems seem to involve working with the government toward reform. This was enlightening, as Canada still calls this country Burma as a big F-U to the current government.
Anyway, the exciting thing right now is that Myanmar is changing very rapidly. A year ago no one spoke openly about the house-arrested democratically elected leader, Aung San Suu Kyi. These days there are pictures of her for sale everywhere, and the newspapers have front-page coverage of her recent meeting with Hillary Clinton. It seems very likely that the democratic party will be running in the upcoming mid-termesque elections. Some say the sanctions may have only a few years left as the country moves toward reform. I had tri-sha drivers nearly wipe out in excitement as they talked about their charismatic leader, known simply as "the lady", who is realistically the only figure who could unite all the rebel groups in peace.
It was all very interesting, and shattered my notions of what a "banned" country looks like. Despite all this I still know very little about the place and will have to do much more reading and return one day. No doubt it will have already changed quite a bit.
Anyway, I think visitors are obligated to talk about what they saw, and that's my summary, as coherent as it can be in my current state waiting in the Bangkok Airport. Today was a busy final day in Bangkok, hurridly hitting the city's best: a teeth cleaning, a cooking class, a swanky rooftop bar, and a go-go bar. Even though I left Burma this morning, it feels like I've been gone for weeks. Yet the longest day of my life is only beginning: this December 15th will last 36 hours. My flight from Korea later today lands in New York City twenty minutes before it took off. Somewhere in there will be a cross-Manhatten epic, lugging around 56 kg of luggage. When it's all said and done I'll be sitting in Tim Hortons in downtown T.O., furiously trying to warm up hands that have forgotten reality. Yet at the moment I am brimming with excitement at the in-flight entertainment ahead, and at the only appropriate ending for this post: see you soon.
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