Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
INTRODUCTION TOMYANMAR
(BURMA)
The largest but least-known nation in Southeast Asia, Myanmar is - to borrow
Churchill's phrase - a riddle wrapped in a mystery. For half a century, the country lan-
guished in self-imposed obscurity under the rule of its despotic and enigmatic military
rulers,littlevisitedandevenlessunderstood.Allthatisnowchanging,andwithspectac-
ularspeed.Following tentative recent economic andpolitical reforms,thenationalland-
scapeisbeingtransformedinwaysunimaginableevenafewyearsago,andvisitorshave
begun flocking to Myanmar in unprecedented numbers. All of a sudden, the country is
now hot property.
Ironically, it's precisely these decades of suffocating political isolation, combined with eco-
nomic stagnation, that have helped preserve (albeit at a terrible human cost) much of Myan-
mar'smagically
time-warpedcharacter
intothetwenty-first century.TheoldBurma immor-
talized by Kipling and Orwell is still very much in evidence today: this remains a land of a
thousand gilded pagodas, of ramshackle towns and rustic villages populated with innumerable
red-robed monks and locals dressed in flowing, sarong-like longyi, their faces smeared in col-
ourful swirls of traditional
thanaka.
It's a place in which life still revolves around the temple
andtheteahouse,andwherethecorporatechainsandglobalbrandsthathavegobbledupmany
other parts of Asia remain notably conspicuous by their absence.
It's also a uniquely diverse nation. Physically, Myanmar encompasses
landscapes
ranging
from the fertile plains of the majestic Ayeyarwady River to the jungle-covered highlands of
Shan State, and from the jagged, snowy Himalayan peaks bounding the northern edge of the
country down to the emerald confetti of tropical islands that dot the Andaman Sea in the far
south.
Culturally
, too, it's a bewilderingly eclectic place, sandwiched between Bangladesh,
India, China and Thailand - all of which have exerted their own distinctive influence on
Burmese architecture, culture, cuisine and much more. Myanmar's position at one of Asia's
great cultural watersheds also accounts for its extraordinary
ethnicdiversity
, with well over a
hundred minority peoples who(despite systematic government oppression) continue to follow
