Jichen Echo, a writer and artist currently living in Dali, China has traveled throughout much of Asia. She was kind enough to provide these beautiful pictures of Myanmar, a country that many Americans (including myself) have never visited. Please enjoy!
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THE GREAT PURIFIER said on 13 Monday 2011 pm30 3:14 pm: Unfortunately for State Department, Myanmar is the officially and internationally recognized name of the country. "Burma" was never an indigenous name of the nation. It was a pure colonialism. http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/un/burma-myanmar.html |
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I highly recommend one drop in to Yangon for a visit. English is widely spoken here and, failing that, pantomime is rather effective (seriously). Grab thineself the Lonely Planet Burmese phrasebook and learn "thank you", "hello", and a couple of other phrases and you will find that people will be delighted by your effort to learn even a tiny bit of one of the many languages spoken here.
There appears to be very low crime here. I was at a Bogyoke Market (a large, partly indoor, partly outdoor clothing, fresh produce, and jewelry market) the other day and saw a shopper drop a wad of kyats (Myanmar's currency) on the ground only to be helped by the stall vendor and passersby who collected the fallen money and handed it to the shopper without issue. That isn't to say there is *no* crime here per se, it's just that I've worried far less about tourist scams and pickpockets here than I did while in Thailand or when travelling through Europe and North Africa.
To sum up: the food is amazing, Yangon is lush and green, and people are kind and gracious. A poster below mentioned that the people of Myanmar would be grateful for the tourist dollars and I wouldn't disagree with that statement.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/un/burma-myanmar.html
How did Jichen Echoet get in (and out) of the country?
It's an interesting view of one section of life there.
Words please, Jichen Echo. We are hungry to know how people are there.
It's not right to isolate people.
Knowledge is freedom and we (and they - big time) are being deprived of it.
Myanmar ( Burma )
USA
Liberia
Yup, we are one out of three.
I have a feeling you have a very long bucket list, as I do ;)
Do go, as the people are extremely nice and they do need any income they can get.
The problem is that the generals run the country and they have military installations near every large town or small city. To advance you join the military; thus the military has a lot of young people who have no other hopes.
China and India buy a lot of the oil and gas resources and neither country seems to care about the human rights violations.
Traveled there in 2008.