I do not wish to appear as an apologist for the military government of Myanmar, but there were things that the U.S. and European countries did that may have encouraged the general’s response. The best summary of this is in the second and third paragraphs of the first page of a letter from Derek Tonkin, whose site networkmyanmar.org tracks what happens in Myanmar. I can’t say it better, so I won’t.

Just as we are getting ready for a southern Thailand trip, Derek Tonkin sent this about vacation travel in Myanmar. I think the tide is turning on tourism to Myanmar. In the recent past you might have been viewed anywhere from politically incorrect to a supporter of a brutal military government if you decided to take a vacation there. Derek refers to a quote from a recent Times Online article about whether you should travel to Myanmar:

“No, said Aung San Suu Kyi, Burma’s courageous opposition leader, in the 1990s when the junta began admitting tourists because it was so desperate for foreign currency.
Yes, with certain provisos, said every diplomat, aid worker, opposition politician, monk and Burmese citizen that we questioned. Circumstances have changed, they argued.”

Note that Aung San Suu Kyi made her statement in the 90’s. It is less certain what her opinion would be at this time.

Two years ago at this time Sue and I spent nearly a month there on two separate trips. One of these lasted 14 days and cost us $910 each. Ordinarily from the U.S. you would pay an additional $1200 + $250 for round trip flights to Bangkok and from there round trip flights to Yangon. It would have been $720 if we could have gotten our group of seven up to ten people. This included our guide, tour bus all the time, one in country flight, boat transport on the river, various horse carriages, etc. It also included breakfast. The other meals were great and did not cost much.

In include a few pictures from that trip out of thousands. I just could not stop. Here is a video of a wedding we crashed south of Yangon. Our guide just happened to see it in a village square as our bus was passing by. They had no problem with us except that we had to stay for pictures with the bride and groom and their families.

The Ultimate trip? Sue and I have traveled to many places and had some great times. I cannot place any of those trips above that one. It’s easy to go. You can get a round trip to Bangkok on any of the internet ticket sites. If you cannot get the Bangkok to Yangon flights easily from the U.S. you can try through the Bangkok agency that I use. Ask for Bill. Finally, to arrange the travel in Myanmar I recommend Exotissimo in Yangon. I would not be surprised if the agency mentioned in the Times article uses Exotissimo for their Myanmar arrangements’.

While you will not need to get a visa to get into Thailand you do need one for Myanmar. Ask Exotissimo about their visa on arrival service. At fifteen dollars it is the only way to fly.

I encourage you to go. I do think the tide is turning. At present, in tourist terms, Myanmar is “unspoiled”. Translation: the economy is so bad and the people so poor that there has been little new construction since the British left after WWII and the people still live like they did hundreds of years ago. Enough tourism and engagement with the West will probably raise the economic level and allow for a bit more of a modern life style. Like maybe some medicine when their children get sick.

It is a great time to come to Myanmar. Help us spoil it.

Mr. Dinger did sent a picture of the U.S. Embassy in Myanmar. As I said before (08 Nov 09) the Embassy is quite impressive, and indicates that although the U.S. has a lot of differences with the government there, it is certainly taking Myanmar seriously. As I remember, there was more in the compound on the other side, past the right edge of the picture, but am not sure. I would guess there are a number of countries that have an ambassador named as such that do not have an Embassy like this one.

As I see it, the U.S. wants a representative democracy to develop in Myanmar, and may wish to withhold some things until it does. Myanmar is hurting in many ways right now. There are countries, such as Singapore, Vietnam and even China that are not democracies by still have a good economy and are busy developing a better life for their people, albeit with some restricted freedoms. Maybe not the best situations, but better than some others I can think of.

When people are hurting badly enough, I suppose I am willing to compromise and not ask for the best. Second best might be worth looking into. Of course, this is not a request to Mr. Dinger. He is sworn to uphold U.S. policy. It’s the president, congress and maybe secretary of state that need to do better by the people of Myanmar, even if its government is not what they would like.

I do have a few hotel/restaurant pictures to show. We stayed at the Winner Inn this time. It was fine: a clean large room with air and hot shower. The staff was friendly and we found we could order, get served and finish an American style breakfast within fifteen minutes if necessary. Normally if I am staying in Yangon I like the Park Royal, shown in the second and third pictures. It is even more downtown than the Winner, large and reasonably luxurious for $55 per night at the moment. I would compare it to hotels in Bangkok in the 150 to 200 dollar range. Meals at its buffet were always good, even for someone as picky as me. I stayed there for a week on my previous visit.

Thant took us to a number of really nice restaurants. Again, in Myanmar you will find prices sharply lower than Bangkok or other Asian cities, but the quality and variety of these Yangon restaurants could not be beat.

We ate lunch at the Feel restaurant our first day back from Bogalay. Everything was good, with a very wide selection as you can see. You pick several vegtable/salad/side dishes and hand them to the staff. You also can pick from the various food trays at the main counter. The first picture in the second row shows what our table looked like when we started. We tried all kinds of Myanmar food here, all very good. Later, we picked Myanmar style deserts from the trays outside in front.

There had to be a shopping expedition to the Bogyoke Aung San market, a five to ten minute walk from the Park Royal. It has over 1600 shops. Hector got some jewelry for his wife in the second picture. The driver’s seatback was held up by wire wound between the headrest stem and the upper seatbelt stay in the cab we took to the market. Note the end of the door in the cab Sue and I took to a laquerware shop later - no latch. I discovered this as I was riding in the front seat. Nearly all cars, cabs or private, are quite old (see video) in Myanmar. On the balance, I still think its safer to be in a car in Myanmar than in Thailand. Nearly all the cars were built before air bags had been invented, but driving is slower and traffic is much less.

There really is very little going on in Myanmar in the way of NGO involvement, trade (remember the sanctions) or tourism from the West. John Badgley first told me this, but I since had to look it up from original sources to prove it to someone else. In each of Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam, the total spending, per person, by all outside governments and NGO’s for social welfare of any kind is about fifty dollars per person per year. In Myanmar it is under two and a half dollars.

Not much is happening here, so when something does it is noticed. I suppose for the same reason whatever we can do here, even if small by many measuring sticks, has a large relative impact. Not much is happening in one way, but for us a lot is happening. It’s all relative.

So who else did we meet? One place that receives books and help from us is the ICE-Youth (Information Center for Every Youth) library in Yangon (see video). This has been running since 2002 and is staffed completely by volunteer students. It has both English and Burmese language books. The photo shows the library staff. At any given time normally only three or four of them would be on duty. What kind of students volunteer to run a library? Each year a test similar to our SAT test is given to 300,000 graduating students in Myanmar. Meeting us there were the students who placed first, second and fourth in this test. I took the third photo on the right showing the top top of a small cart near the front desk. It shows what many of these students and others who come into this library are thinking about.

Myanmar Egress is an association which teaches as well as coordinates activities of students and graduates in Yangon. Students in the class pictured are studying international economics. Immediately after cyclone Nargis aid was delayed in getting to the victims. This is the organization that first got aid to the south, and then quickly trained other NGO’s how to operate in the south and cooperate with the Myanmar government. Their English language library is important to them. The librarians pulled a number of books off the shelves, and there on the inside cover was our stamp.

We visited several other no less impressive organizations helping to move Myanmar into the international community. One thing the people in all these organizations agree on is that education and knowledge is the key, with knowledge and education in English being a big part of that, and our books will form a key part of that.

The round table was held on the 31st at the Park Royal hotel in Yangon. In addition to John, Thant, Hector, Sue and myself several other board members from Myanmar came along with a lady named Ju (blue dress) who is currently Myanmar’s most famous author. Thant’s father U Thaw Kaung, to Sue’s right, moderated the meeting. He is on the board or heading up any non governmental foundation or organization involved with libraries on the national level in Myanmar that I am aware of. Dr. May Moe Nwe, part owner of the bookstore along with Thant is at the right. She is also a board member and secretary of Myanmar Book Aid and Preservation Foundation. This meeting summarized accomplishments so far and planned our activities through the end of this year. John describes it more fully here.

I need to qualify what I said at the beginning of the previous post. I actually have met and am now friends with Derek Tonkin the former British ambassador to Vietnam, Thailand and Cambodia over a span of many years. I met him two years ago. What country do you suppose we were in when we met?

We discussed our book donations to Myanmar and its importance in helping the country to move into the modern, largely English speaking, international community better. While the U.S. does maintain trade sanctions against Myanmar, they have granted our organization an exception, and at various levels, including Mr. Dinger’s, have been most willing to do what they can to help us bring in our books.

The new embassy was certainly impressive, although I have to admit it is the first embassy of any country that I have been in. I wish I could have taken some pictures but that is not permitted at all. I looked on the internet and could not find any there either. If Mr. Dinger reads this maybe he’ll send me some that I can use here.

We met several other people there and all were most helpful.

Near the end of our visit we discovered that many children’s books that Hector had donated to the Asia foundation had in fact found their way to the Embassy library where we found them sitting in boxes on the floor waiting to be unpacked. From there they will be distributed to other parts of Myanmar with some going to the American Center library in Yangon. I would have taken a picture to show you but…

That evening we met Mr. Dinger along with several other ambassadors and some heads of large corporations still operating in Myanmar at a dinner. This was at an impressive restaurant at a very nice hotel. I sat next to the ambassador of another country, with yet another ambassador next to her. Sue sat next to Mr. Dinger on down the table. I will release one detail about Mr. Dinger. If you ever have him over for dinner serve sushi and you will have one happy camper.

Each of the Nargis Library board members spoke briefly to explain their connection to our organization and why we think it is so important. John talked about overall strategy and how our books and more education will impact Myanmar for the better. Hector spoke about book supplies and what books we can bring to Myanmar. I talked about the tremendous opportunity I have found in our organization in that a very small amount of money can make a tremendous difference for an entire country. This is because we 1). have a free supply of very good quality books from Thrift Books and 2) American President shipping lines is transporting our large containers of books to Myanmar at zero cost. We are bringing high quality books into Myanmar for about four or five cents apiece. Finally 3) we have many people not the least of whom are the Bhuddhist monks of Myanmar who are willing to help us distribute and house books at little or no cost to us.

I won’t say it was a gala event because none of us wore a suit or a tie and the ladies, while dressed quite nicely, were not in any kind of formal attire. Still, it was a most interesting evening.

What we do with many of the books we bring in is give them to the Buddhist monks. I’m not sure whether we make any merit in the Buddhist sense, but many temples in Myanmar have libraries that house our books and are used by their communities. The monks also distribute the books to these at little or no cost to us. They run a number of schools that can use our books as well.

Things are done in the Buddhist way, with appropriate ceremony. Several of these presentations have occurred in the past in various parts of Myanmar but this is the first that I have attended. The monks are in front, the adults facing them in the audience, and the children from the temple school are behind. The banner of Myanmar Book Aid and Preservation Foundation, our counterpart organization in Myanmar, is over the front area. The boxes on either side between the monks and the audience hold our books. The brown boxes are primarily English language children’s books while the white boxes are Burmese language books purchased from the proceeds of selling some of the popular fiction and non fiction books we bring over at book fairs in Yangon.

The actual presentation occurred when Hector, Thant and I handed a small stack of books to a monk. We did this several times to about four of the monks.

After we had presented the books to the monks and the ceremony was over Sue presented a book to to the children. The way they quickly got into position around her on the floor indicated they sit with a teacher this way often. It worked better than I would have thought. I suppose her experience teaching kids in the Indian slums English in part by reading to them helped. Also the book “Goodnight Moon”, like most of our children’s books, has many pictures and few words. I think this helped, and hope it will help the children to learn English as they use these books in their schools and libraries.

I got distracted by Sue reading to the kids but still managed to catch part of the distribution network before he got away on his bicycle taxi.

We stopped at several libraries on this trip. The Saya Zawgyi Centinary Library in Pyarpon on the way back stood out. We met with the library board. These men represent the “grass roots” people that we deal with. They are essential to our success and their country’s education. We went over records, check out proceedure, etc. and saw that circulation was substantial for a library of that size. Many of our books were already in this library, with more to come.

I don’t go to the library much. I buy books I read from a bookstore or online. It was an eye opener for me to realize how important libraries are in Myanmar. They don’t have the money to buy a book, and if they did, where will they get English language books, even in Yangon? Even if they could get online Amazon does not deliver in Myanmar. Fortunately for us, with the help of American President shipping lines, Thriftbooks does.

We took a two day trip in a van to the city of Bogalay which is in the north east part of the southern delta area. We visited libraries and some monastery schools there and in the surrounding area. The highlight of this trip was traveling by a small boat which just held our group to riverside villages in the area. There we again learned about education and libraries in the more outlying areas.

If you’re looking for Bogalay you might try spelling it “Bogale” also. Some spell checkers, and Google maps spells it that way.

The delta area of Myanmar was devastated by cyclone Nargis over a year and a half ago. Most buildings in this area at least lost their roofs if they were not entirely flattened. A lot of rebuilding has occurred in the last year and a half. In some ways it is easier here than other more developed parts of the world since there is less complexity to be rebuilt. Still, we heard stories of how hard it was for children to come back to school and study after they had lost most of their families, their homes, or whatever else a child might have to lose.

The trip down was made by van on the handmade roads of Myanmar. These are made from one to three inch rock placed by hand and then rolled. Because of the rocks they are bumpy in a way that makes a lot of noise and must be wearing on the car, but does not shake the passengers. Potholes do not seem to develop in these type roads. I think if they can put good layer of asphalt over such a base they’ll have some long lasting roads. We saw very few cars, buses and motorbikes but a lot of bicycles and bicycle taxis. At one point we ran head on into a Buddhist Ka-htain donation celebration on the road and had to stop. Men were in buffalo costumes (see video) and other men “fought” them. Ka-htain marks the end of 3 months of Waso (Buddhist Lent) in which monks are not allowed to travel. The monks are now back out and receiving offerings.

The view was countryside most of the time. Many of the photos here were “drive by” from a moving car, so please forgive the tilt and maybe lack of clarity. Often there would be a canal near the road so that access to homes was via a log bridge. This is the delta area, so we went over a number of small and some large bridges. I tried to get these water areas as we passed.

The river trip was made in a small boat shown in the first picture below. It was provided by friends and education/library supporters U Aung Nyunt and his wife Daw Kyin Nu. We started out inside (see video) but soon got outside to better enjoy the scenery (see another video). Most small boats that are powered in Myanmar use a small Chinese once cylinder diesel engine with a long propeller shaft. I guess you could call it an outboard motor, but it is far simpler and cheaper (from $150 to about $300 for larger engines) than an outboard you would buy in the U.S. We traveled a few hours past many colorful boats to the river village Myin Ka Gone. The village had a row of houses along the river, and then a walkway which I think was its main thorofare. It may not have had road access, since this and a few other walkways were all we saw. One of the last pictures you see is a kindergarten teacher standing next to the school library. We plan to help them out.

As we went on this and other expeditions in Myanmar, people from the local area helped us a great deal along the way. In Myanmar the people are always the best part.

Sue and I were there with to other board members of the Nargis Library Recovery project, John Badgley, Hector Rivas and Dr. Thant Thaw Kaung.  John is an “old Burma hand”. He has been in and out of Myanmar almost since I was born. He knows a lot about the country and has many friends there. He also has a keen insight into the problems there and what can practically be done to help. Hector is CEO of the largest used book company in the world. He has a number of warehouses throughout the U.S. and sells on the internet. If you have ever ordered a used or out of print book through Amazon, chances are his company fulfilled your order (plug: you can get a better deal if you go direct – www.thriftbooks.com). Thant is our main Burmese board member, John’s counterpart in Myanmar. He manages our activities there.

From left to right, Jack, Sue, Hector, Thant and John. The Bogale, Myanmar library board is behind the table.

This was Hector’s first time to Myanmar and he said he was a bit concerned about safety and what the government there might do to him if anything went wrong. After having been there a few days he realized that the problems he had imagined were simply not there. Those of us old enough to remember the grey pall that hung over the old Iron Curtain countries, how an American talking to a local person could result in that person being questioned or arrested, will be relieved to see that at least the appearance of Myanmar is completely different. The atmosphere appears very free and open, and will be that way if you follow a few rules that are easy for most of us: do not openly oppose the government, hand out anti government leaflets, etc. If you see some sort of political demonstration (we never have) go the other way. While the press has some limits, conversations between individuals is generally quite free and open.

The greatest danger to life and limb in Myanmar is the same as when traveling in any other country – a road accident. For Myanmar you are likely safer than most other places because there are fewer cars. When traveling south of Yangon it was common for us to be the only four wheeled vehicle on the road, with maybe one or two motorcycles within view and about fifty bicycles.

So what is Myanmar like? I think of it in contrast to Thailand. I was talking to a tourist who was just back from Koi Samui, a southern beach tourist place. He lamented that it was not like he saw it twenty years ago. Now it is high rise condos and high real estate prices. What if you could visit Thailand fifty years ago? That is what Myanmar is like.

Shwedagon at night.  You cannot come to Myanmar without seeing this.

The people are invariably friendly. The only place they might be a bit testy (one waved me off when I tried to take a photo) might be around Shwedagon, the greatest pagoda in Myanmar. I can see that since one hundred percent of the Myanmar tourists go there it may get a bit old to some of the locals. Even there any problems are minor compared with anywhere in say, Tokyo or France. The Burmese people are uniformly thrilled to have Americans visit. There certainly are few of us that I have seen. I have run into a few Germans and other Europeans, but in my four trips cannot offhand remember any Americans that I ran into on the streets or at any of the major cultural sites.

 The trip was only six days, but a lot happened. I will tell more in future posts.