Common Sense and Whiskey

Suu Kyi Free

And speaking of Burma, if you've read a little about Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, you can't help but be happy for her personally to see this news.

Tourist Hordes, Thataway

Opening up Burma will be constrained by the lack of tourism infrastructure. There aren't many flights, or many hotels to sleep people who find their way in. Bangkok and Singapore are the main gateways. You can fly international carriers from Kolkata and KL. Vietnam Airlines has flights now, there are flights from China and Taiwan, and Doha via Qatar Airways is coming in October. All these flights, though, are to Rangoon.

Once you're in the country it's all day on the roads or rails (or the overnight train) to Mandalay or Bagan - or a domestic flight - and some people avoid domestic flights in places like Burma. But wait: China Eastern has a daily flight from Kunming. Takes about an hour.

Building out Burma will take some time, but not necessarily too much. Think of Luang Prabang, Laos, where scarcely more than a decade ago a room with a loud, lumbering wall air conditioning unit was luxury. Or its sister Siem Reap, which didn't use to claim all the world's most pretentious hotels. Honest.

In fact, if Burma makes good choices on building out all the things it needs, which is everything - road and rail and cell phone towers, to start - it has a shot at being the shiniest new jewel in the region. I found this look at the state of tourism in Burma to be interesting.

Common Sense and Whiskey, the Book - Burma, Chapter Six

Here is Chapter Six of Common Sense and Whiskey, the book. We'll publish each chapter over the course of the summer (Track down previous chapters here). You can order the entire book direct from EarthPhotos Publishing, or at Amazon.com. Photos and additional commentary are available at A Common Sense and Whiskey Companion. And here's the Burma Gallery at EarthPhotos.com.

Aye Chan Zin, a 22 year old competitive bicycle racer, once raced from Rangoon to Mandalay and back. He fell and lost both incisors to gold teeth.

"Road very bad out there," he grinned, goldly.

Aye Chan ("EEE-Chan,") was a kid of relative privilege, a third-year vet school student with parents with government jobs. His dad was Chinese, a doctor working in Burma on a leprosy project. His mom was a philosophy teacher at Yangon University. A family album he kept in the car was chock full of smiling brothers and sisters.

He had his Dad’s tan Toyota with tinted windows. We hired him as our driver, and on Tuesday the seventh of February or, as The New Light of Myanmar newspaper called it, the eighth waxing of Tabodwe, 1356 ME, we set out for a drive into the country.

First on Chan’s tour of Rangoon hotspots, “That's military headquarters.”

Did the leadership live there?

"Not live just work."

There was the parliament building far across a lawn. It was not possible to visit the parliament building. You can tour the White House, the Kremlin, the Great Hall of the People, but not the Myanmar parliament. Up next came Myanmar Television and Radio, and then, "ice factory."

Guides have their peculiarities. A man we once hired in Beijing forever wanted to try out his English.

"That is tree. Tree?" Zhong from Beijing would ask.

Here in Burma, Chan was factory infatuated. Before the end of the day we saw: ice factory, milk factory, brick factory ("you want to take picture?"), rice factory and garment factory.

The More Things Still Don't Change....

Fifteen years ago, on our trip to Burma:

"First thing, I took a walk to the waterfront. It's just across Strand Road. I determined the ferry that just goes back and forth across the River Yangon and climbed on. Dark was creeping up.

The boat, "Autobus 1," had three bare bulbs overhead and a hundred eight-inch tall by six-inch wide wood seats that you grabbed and sat down low on, so I did. Pretty soon I was surrounded by three boys, maybe 17, 15 and eight. We didn't speak a common language, so we just sat and smoked. What the hell.

Maybe 150 people on board for an eight minute trip to the village across the way. When we chugged up to the far side Mr. Eight Year Old and a buddy gathered the little stools in a big pile for use by the next batch of passengers.

My other friends hopped off the boat and negotiated beers from a vendor who sat by the light of two candles on the dock. Directly across the river, line of sight from the downtown of the capital city of this country, there was no electricity. Just candles."

Howard French has been to Rangoon recently and from his reporting, it sounds like fifteen years later it's pretty much the same.

(Photo from the Burma Gallery at EarthPhotos.com.)

 

Burma Subterfuge: ""Su Free Unite & Advance to Grab The Hope."

Go now, while you can, to at least temporarily free(er) Burma.

From our Burma story:

When we turned down University Avenue toward Aung San Suu Kyi's house, at number 54,

Chan pointed out there was no military outside.
"Inside the gate," he said.

That was fifteen years ago. The lady was under house arrest and has been in and out of it since. During the confinement of their chosen keader, the resilience and just general spunk of the Burmese has never wavered. A heartwarming, really fun example - with play-by-play explanation here:

See a few photos in the Burma Gallery at Earthphotos.com.

They Do "Elections" in Burma, Too

Burma's election is this weekend, and right on cue, here come the predictable headlines like "Internet service slowed across Burma." It's attributed to a "faulty connection."

Here's an election overview.

There are exile and dissident web sites, like Burma Election 2010, the Democratic Voice of Burma, and the best known, The Irrawaddy, and they make for pretty depressing reading. About the best you can hope for is that not a lot of people get hurt.

Here's a story from our trip to Burma in 1995, called Hurtling Unwisely Through Burma. There are a few photos in the Burma Gallery at EarthPhotos.com.

Little Culinary Horrors

From our most recent trip abroad, we brought home scorpion vodka and Thai green curry crickets. I don't imagine they'll ever come out of their packages, though. Just interesting items for the kitchen counter.

I've just seen a discussion on Flyertalk about the strangest things people have ever eaten. Among them: dog and slugs and durian, of course, and live octopus and insect pupa. (We watched a man buy and enjoy a caterpillar in Burma. Said it tasted like butter.) In comparison, I guess my list is fairly conservative: fried scorpion in Beijing and crocodile tail in Cape Town. Scorpion was fine. Had a little problem with the croc.

The picture is from a visit to a big farmers market in Hanoi. The ladies we talked to were disdainful. Only men ate dog. Usually when drinking beer.

*****

There are 274 more photos from around the world in the Food and Drink Gallery at EarthPhotos.com.

Hurtling Unwisely Through Burma: A Story

The more things change....

We spent a few days in Burma in 1995, and just like today, Aung San Suu Kyi was in internal exile at number 54 University Avenue in Rangoon. Her return to exile this week has had Burma briefly back in the press, and has prompted me to go back and find what I wrote about Burma at the time. An excerpt follows:

*****

In Burma, people really live outdoors more than in. Thatch and open rooms. It’s the vast Mississippi bayou with banana trees.

Smoke from wood fires hung in stratified ranks and the good people of the Irrawaddy delta tended to their livestock and their morning chores. Out in the middle of rubber farms in the middle of nowhere, cruising along another bad road, the world exploded before us. The whole earth went splintery and kaleidoscopic with a terrific bang.

Chan kept his heavy foot on the gas for four or seven seconds, our little Toyota flew down the road, all three of us were blinded in the billowing dust until slowly we realized the windshield was gone. We couldn't see a thing, and Chan slowly coasted to a halt.

He anguished for a time. He wanted to be alone. There'd surely be hell to pay for busting his dad's windshield. Mirja and I walked over to the roadside to let him grieve by himself. He pulled some of the big glass chunks out of the windshield and I got up and helped, both of us cutting our hands a little and scraping the glass off the seats and wiping the sweat off our brows.

A crow cawed a curious tune. Two men wandered out to look.

*****

Aye Chan, a 22 year old competitive bicycle racer, once raced from Rangoon to Mandalay and back. He fell and lost both incisors to gold teeth.

The day we met, Aye Chan grinned goldly, "Road very bad out there."

Aye Chan ("EEE-Chan,") was a child of relative privilege, a third-year vet school student with parents with government jobs. His dad was Chinese, a doctor working in Burma on a leprosy project. His mom was a philosophy teacher at Yangon University. A family album he kept in the car was chock full of smiling brothers and sisters.

We hired him as our driver, and on Tuesday the seventh of February or, as the newspaper The New Light of Myanmar called it, the eighth waxing of Tabodwe, 1356 ME, we set out for a drive into the country. He borrowed his dad’s tan Toyota with tinted windows.

First on Chan’s Tour of Rangoon Hotspots, “That's military headquarters.”

Sweetness and Light and Harmony and Justice and Progress: Burma

Daw Aung San Suu Kyi's continued imprisonment beyond the next "election" won't surprise anyone, but before Burma slides back into its sulking isolation, this deserves attention:

On 1 August, the Sydney Morning Herald ran a story headlined Revealed: Burma's Nuclear Bombshell, purporting to describe a five year plan by Burma's General Than Shwe to acquire a nuclear bomb. Two days later the Lowy Interpreter followed up with a discussion. The same day Arms Control Wonk published a photo under the headline Big Odd Myanmar Box, about a structure the Institute for Science and International Security calls an "anomalous building buried in the ground northeast of Maymyo, Burma."

*****

There are low level insurgencies along Burma's eastern and western borders and it's widely believed its leadership colludes with Chinese logging interests to clear cut forests north of Mandalay. In general, journalists are not permitted visas. We went to Burma in 1995, and all those fourteen long years ago Aung San Suu Kyi sat under house arrest in the very same house at 54 University Avenue to which she'll now be returning (at least it's going to be renovated). I have a story from our trip around here somewhere....

(Photo of Than Shwe via the Independent. See photos in the Burma Gallery at EarthPhotos.com.)

We're from the Junta and We're Here to Help

A verdict is expected in Aung San Suu Kyi's case tomorrow in Burma. So today, "Burma's military rulers have warned supporters of jailed pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi not to protest when her trial verdict is announced," says the BBC.

Hmmm, do you suppose the junta has advance word on what they verdict might be?

(Photo of local transport near the village of Siriam in southern Burma. More in the Burma Gallery at EarthPhotos.com.)

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Don't Forget the Lady

It's difficult to imagine a "happy" birthday for Aung San Suu Kyi today in Rangoon's Insein prison, but we note that she's 64 today.

On Your Next Burma Vacation, Stay Out of Aung San Suu Kyi's Lake

Burma's Suu Kyi taken to prison
Burma's opposition leader charged
Lawyer: Trial imminent for Myanmar's Suu Kyi
Burmese Opposition says Aung San Suu Kyi to Face Trial

The opposition leader's latest house arrest was due to expire at the end of this month, so this shoe was surely poised to drop. It's been a long, very slow, very unhappy road for Daw Aung San Suu Kyi. From our visit to Burma, way back in 1995:

Chan turned down University Avenue. This was where The Lady lived, behind a yellow and green picket fence at #54. She's the daughter of the national hero Aung San, and her National League for Democracy was elected in 1990. The State Law and Order Restoration Council, or SLORC, admitted the results but wouldn't hand over power. (The SLORC was later renamed the State Peace and Development Council, SLORC apparently sounding too evil even for SLORC.)

To say "freely elected" would be misleading. In the run-up to the election whole towns were dislocated, in an attempt to untrack the steamroller. Even through all this, the NLD won convincingly.

So now instead of fleeing to join her husband in London with the forced promise she'd never return, Aung San Suu Kyi lived alone, surrounded by military at #54 University Avenue - across the lake from the military leader.

Chan pointed out there was no military outside.

"Inside the gate," he said.

Burmese Diplomat's Undiplomatic Language

The letter at left (click for a bigger copy) was distributed among the consular community of Hong Kong and Macau. It was issued from the Burmese consulate there, by a Burmese diplomat named Ye Myint Aung.

It describes a Muslim ethnic minority in western Burma, a people called Rohingyas, as “dark brown” and as “ugly as ogres.”

And this is from a diplomat.

Burma's military government denies the Rohingyas are Burmese, claiming they are migrant Bangladeshis instead. According to the Bangkok Post, "Rights groups say the Rohingya are stateless and face religious and ethnic persecution from the Burmese military regime, forcing thousands to take to rickety boats each year in a bid to escape poverty and oppression."

The Post further notes, "Thailand's military was accused in January of towing hundreds of Rohingya out to sea in poorly equipped boats with scant food and water after they tried to flee Burma, a charge Thailand has 'categorically denied'."

See photos from Burma in the Burma Gallery on EarthPhotos.com.