I think the best way to structure the blog posts will be in four parts. This first entry will be my overall impressions, and then over the next week will follow three installments for the three places we visited: Yangon/Rangoon, Bagan, and Inle Lake.
On landing, the airport impressed us - the international terminal, at least, is clean and relatively new. The immigration line moved slowly, but the only place I've seen passport control go quickly is Singapore. Our bags had to be x-rayed on exiting the terminal, which was a new experience, but I suppose for a country so isolated, they need to take the duty limits (and taxes) seriously. Tracy was easy to spot with cars ready. The government has obviously put a lot of effort into standing behind the motto posted all over: "Warmly Welcome & Be Kind to Tourist."
Initial impressions reminded me of a cross between Chennai and Kolkata many years ago - in Yangon/Rangoon, the East India Tea Company British influence is readily apparent. Greg and I found ourselves wondering if this is what India was like in the 1950s or 1960s.
While the country is developing (GDP per capita = $2,989 - for other stats, click here), the "poorness" did not feel overwhelming - a strange lack of squalor. No street children at the corners knocking on taxi windows. No street people at all, actually. Even in the villages in the countryside we passed, all the children wore clothing. Either the per capita wealth is relatively well distributed (meaning, with a lack of a middle class, aside from the super wealthy elite, everyone else tends right around the per capita income), or the government does a good job of hiding squalor through population movement control or other measures.
By movement control, I mean just that. Passports of every passenger checked at every airport and at the entrance to the tourist areas we went. We, of course, had no trouble entering each place, but I'm really not sure if a Burmese/Myanma citizen needs permission to vacation within the country.
As in many south east Asian countries, the people we met were all warm and friendly. Perhaps it has something to do with the hot and steamy climate - if you don't have an easy going personality, you'll just be miserable because the weather will make you cranky. At least it did for us - it was HOT. Luckily, Patch still needs at least a 2.5 hour nap every day after lunch, so we had an enforced siesta time right at the peak of the heat. If only Wm would nap, too ... then we all could have slept :)
For all the talk about a closed regime, many people volunteered to talk about politics without even being asked. I never heard anything critical of the government, now that I think about it, but I did hear and see much in support of the opposition leader, whose party reportedly won 43 of 44 seats in a by-election held the day we arrived. The front page of the English newspaper every day had at least three articles of what the president was doing - but world news was reported on the inside pages (my favorite news source quoted? "Online." Whatever that means!). I can't speak to what the Burmese/Myanma papers report - the alphabet is even more curly-qued than Telugu!
Of course, for any foreign service officer, we can't help but evaluate if we'd like a posting there. I think our initial impression is that we'd probably have a fun tour if we ended up there, but we're not sure if it's a place we'd seek out. Benefits: lots of interesting culture and history to learn; small expat community, so if you like your embassy coworkers and the few other expats with NGOs or schools and such, we'd have an easy time meeting people (Manila is so big and spread out - it's hard here); concerns about personal safety were very low; traffic not very bad. Drawbacks: the isolation; limited availability / high cost of import goods (though we found Skippy peanut butter, so Patch was happy -- and all the fruits and vegetables we ate were delicious, so maybe we wouldn't miss things too much); spotty internet access.
On landing, the airport impressed us - the international terminal, at least, is clean and relatively new. The immigration line moved slowly, but the only place I've seen passport control go quickly is Singapore. Our bags had to be x-rayed on exiting the terminal, which was a new experience, but I suppose for a country so isolated, they need to take the duty limits (and taxes) seriously. Tracy was easy to spot with cars ready. The government has obviously put a lot of effort into standing behind the motto posted all over: "Warmly Welcome & Be Kind to Tourist."
Initial impressions reminded me of a cross between Chennai and Kolkata many years ago - in Yangon/Rangoon, the East India Tea Company British influence is readily apparent. Greg and I found ourselves wondering if this is what India was like in the 1950s or 1960s.
While the country is developing (GDP per capita = $2,989 - for other stats, click here), the "poorness" did not feel overwhelming - a strange lack of squalor. No street children at the corners knocking on taxi windows. No street people at all, actually. Even in the villages in the countryside we passed, all the children wore clothing. Either the per capita wealth is relatively well distributed (meaning, with a lack of a middle class, aside from the super wealthy elite, everyone else tends right around the per capita income), or the government does a good job of hiding squalor through population movement control or other measures.
By movement control, I mean just that. Passports of every passenger checked at every airport and at the entrance to the tourist areas we went. We, of course, had no trouble entering each place, but I'm really not sure if a Burmese/Myanma citizen needs permission to vacation within the country.
As in many south east Asian countries, the people we met were all warm and friendly. Perhaps it has something to do with the hot and steamy climate - if you don't have an easy going personality, you'll just be miserable because the weather will make you cranky. At least it did for us - it was HOT. Luckily, Patch still needs at least a 2.5 hour nap every day after lunch, so we had an enforced siesta time right at the peak of the heat. If only Wm would nap, too ... then we all could have slept :)
For all the talk about a closed regime, many people volunteered to talk about politics without even being asked. I never heard anything critical of the government, now that I think about it, but I did hear and see much in support of the opposition leader, whose party reportedly won 43 of 44 seats in a by-election held the day we arrived. The front page of the English newspaper every day had at least three articles of what the president was doing - but world news was reported on the inside pages (my favorite news source quoted? "Online." Whatever that means!). I can't speak to what the Burmese/Myanma papers report - the alphabet is even more curly-qued than Telugu!
Of course, for any foreign service officer, we can't help but evaluate if we'd like a posting there. I think our initial impression is that we'd probably have a fun tour if we ended up there, but we're not sure if it's a place we'd seek out. Benefits: lots of interesting culture and history to learn; small expat community, so if you like your embassy coworkers and the few other expats with NGOs or schools and such, we'd have an easy time meeting people (Manila is so big and spread out - it's hard here); concerns about personal safety were very low; traffic not very bad. Drawbacks: the isolation; limited availability / high cost of import goods (though we found Skippy peanut butter, so Patch was happy -- and all the fruits and vegetables we ate were delicious, so maybe we wouldn't miss things too much); spotty internet access.
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