Caroline's flight will be landing in about half an hour, so I feel a bit happier about posting this now.
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I write this post on the flight home after a wonderful week. It's not that I am particularly well organised and impatient to get writing; more that my headphones just died and my book is in my bag in the overhead locker.
I could always ask my neighbours to move so I could get my book, I'm not too polite, just keen to avoid hypocrisy since I have been known to be a little intolerant of other thoughtless passengers.
So the consequence is that I am writing a few lines now, before I am even home. Obviously I'll have to wait till we land to post this, we're not quite at the stage of mid-air blogging yet; although you can send emails on-board some Emirates flights.
I'm not going to get into details about the trip yet. Caroline and Sunnia have another week away and I don't want to steal Caroline's thunder, so we'll be doing something of a joint effort when she gets back.
We visited four places in total:
- Yangon (Rangoon)
- Bagan
- Mandalay
- Inle lake
And the girls have gone on for a few days at a beach resort called Thandwe and then another day in Yangon before heading back to Beijing. Sadly I no longer share the lengthy teaching holidays of Sunnia nor the generous provision that Caroline enjoys. Anyone that has spoken to me about the new job though will now that I don't resent that for a moment, quite the contrary and in fact at just over thirty days a year my holiday allowance is sizeable by any other standards.
The different cities and regions were very diverse and I / we will be writing a little about each of them in an effort to capture some of there most compelling features. We'll also be posting pictures organised by location to our flickr page - just wait till you see some of those. Caroline's new camera and photography lessons have certainly paid off.
So in advance of the more detailed posts next week, I thought I'd post a few words about travelling to a country under sanctions and one that until recently was the subject of call for a tourism boycott by Aung San Suu Kyi (ASSK), daughter of the independence hero and dissident.
I don't know enough about the political situation in Myanmar to try and explain it in any depth here.
I'll look out for some better informed sources and link to those for anyone interested. I am a keen follower of international politics though and have learned to think a bit more ethically when buying goods and services - mainly thanks to Caroline's experience and studies.
So I certainly know enough to be sure the current Myanmar government is not a popularly elected one and does not seem to act in the interests of the majority of its citizens. On the flip-side, coming from the former colonial power puts me in a weak position to make too many judgements (at least in my analysis).
As an aside I wasn't even sure if the name change to Myanmar was internally popular or not. With a tyrannical regime it can be difficult to judge any of their actions individually, rather than lump it all together as bad. However, if you go on what locals call their country; Myanmar is indeed the popular term as is Yangon, although I did hear people use Burma and Rangoon on the odd occasion too.
It's my understanding that since her most recent house arrest came to an end ASSK has called for an end to the unofficial tourism boycott as a means to bring some essential income to an extremely poor country. With this in mind I felt a bit easier about travelling there, especially since the Lonely Planet guide offers some handy tips for avoiding government-owned businesses and how to skip paying the fees at tourist sites. However it's worth bearing in mind that LP is the subject of criticism in ethical travel circles merely for publishing a guide to the country in the first place - like I say I'm no expert on this subject and welcome any criticism or thoughts in the comments section below.
By my reckoning we paid about $30 each in direct tourism taxes and the like and managed to skip paying about the same either by using a different entrance following advice from the guide or our taxi drivers, or simply by skipping some places entirely to avoid contributing.
Needless to say we spent a fair bit more than that on hotels and local expenditure which hopefully will contribute to the economy for normal citizens, rather than just enrich generals and their families. Indirectly however I do know that our domestic airline tickets were booked with an airline company close to the regime but none of our hotels were (to our knowledge). It's a bit of a tricky one and I'm not trying to justify our choices to anyone other than ourselves.
I also think that the recent elections held, even if they were not free and fair (to use the clichéd parlance) are progress from a situation of direct rule with no voting whatever. At least it is apparent that democracy is a good thing even if they are not there yet. I think it is also the case that the supreme leader (or whatever pompous title he goes by) has renounced his military position for the elections. Again, I'm not suggesting by any stretch that he is therefore a legitimate leader, more that it seems like progress to my eye, even if it is also slight.
So to round up these introductory thoughts; a few people, upon hearing I was British mentioned their love of the BBC which is officially banned - worth considering in this time of drastic (if not to say swingeing - if you like your clichés) spending cuts specifically on the World Service. And a couple of people also mentioned ASSK by name, both actions that I am led to believe could result in serious trouble if they were overheard and reported by the (supposedly) many local stooges for the government. I guess the existence of people willing to sell each other out in an extremely poor place is inevitable, but that's a whole other debate.
As I said above, I'd be interested to hear anyone's thoughts on the issues of ethical travel I've raised here so please do comment if you've got something to say. It would be especially interesting to hear from someone from Myanmar, although I suspect they'd have to be outside the country to express themselves fully.
Next week there'll be some more touristy posts and lots of photographs to come, in the interim I'll post a few photographs (from the phone, but still not bad) to Facebook, so if we're friends you'll be able to see them on there.
I should probably conclude by saying that Myanmar is an amazing place with an incredibly strong cultural, religious and architectural heritage which makes it a fantastic destination for a holiday - all politics aside.
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