Well, family and friends, its time to hit the road again. Hard to believe its been a year since my last trip to Northern Thailand. I had several ideas for this trip, which I started thinking about on the way home from Thailand to be honest. My friend Katie sent me an article from a travel site entitled "24 Signs That You Are Addicted to Traveling", and one of them was, you start planning your next trip before you are done with your current trip, oh yea, that's me. Top on my list was Ecuador, Argentina, Malaysia and see the rest of Laos, but, the one country that has been pulling at me the most the past couple of years is Myanmar, and I decided now is the right time to go.
Now to address the one comment I have heard most: Myanmar - never heard of it. Well, let me quote J. Peterman from the Seinfeld Show: "You may know it as Myanmar, but it will always be Burma to me". Now as far as where its located, check out the map below.
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| Myanmar Flag |
After WW2 Burma was given independence by the British and was quickly put under Military control. The last 50 years has seen severe Military Rule, with little freedoms and a country that has been closed off to the rest of the world. Many people were jailed if they spoke out against the Govt. In the 90's the ruling Generals saw all the tourist dollars pouring into Thailand and the rest of Asia and realized they were missing out. They relaxed the rules a bit for entering the country and started a "Come Visit Myanmar" campaign that was a flop. Activist and Pro-Democracy supporters encouraged people not to go, and it worked, saying the tourist dollars would go into the pockets of the ruling elite. A couple of years ago, the Generals started relaxing many of the harsh rules, releasing political prisoners from jail, relaxing some censorship of the press, and allowing elections. Things are slowly improving for the people, and they are cautiously optimistic. The big issue now is, with tourism on the rise, the infrastructure has a long way to catch up. It ought to be interesting.
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| Visa stamp |
Part of the challenge of traveling to the country is money, as hardly anyone can take a credit card, so you might as well forget about that. As of this past summer, they are starting to get some ATM's in the main tourist areas, if you are lucky enough for your card to work there, but for the most part, you need to bring all the money with you for your trip, so you better budget well. And, it needs to be crisp, non torn, new $100 bills, or they will be rejected. Luckily there seem to be no big issues with finding places to exchange your bills into the local currency. The other challenge was getting a visa. I decided to go the sure thing route and printed out the 3 pages of forms from the website for the Embassy of Myanmar in Washington DC. Why they needed your work history I will never know, but I filled out all the forms, included 2 passport photos, a $20 cashiers check, copies of my Air China tickets, proof of my first 3 nights hotel stay in Yangon, my passport and a return envelope and sent to Washington. I hate loosing control of my passport but this seemed the best route to go. 9 days later I had my passport back with a 28 day Tourist Visa stamp. It turned out to be a non issue.
I am flying to LA as usual on Southwest Airlines this morning, then catch a 1:30 pm flight on Air China to Beijing. I have a 2 1/2 hour layover in Beijing, where hopefully will have time to grab a meal, then a direct flight to Yangon, Myanmar which will arrive at 10:45 Friday night. All in all, it will be about 19-20 hours in the air. Ugh! I promised a few "shout outs" during the trip, so I will live up to that. Part of the growing pains for Myanmar, is I really don't know what to expect "wifi" wise, so the reports may be bundled when I can get good coverage. I am hoping the time in the main tourist areas will afford me the opportunity to send out my reports. But I heard even then it can be sketchy. We will see.
Lastly, as you can see I have updated to another blog site. I was having some issues with the last one and seeing if this site is a bit more user friendly for a novice like myself. I was able to pull the post from previous trips to this site so they are not lost and I am even going to go back to some past trips and try to add them so I can have them all in one spot. I hope you like this version better and looking forward to getting your comments. Some other new things for this trip, my 5 year old mini laptop bit the dust, so I have a new 11" Dell laptop with touch screen and Dragon Software so I can voice input my blogs and not have to type them. I got a real deal on it and very happy so far. I also found a small, inexpensive video camera, so I am going to try my hand at video blogging to see how that goes. It may turn out to be a disaster, but I will try it anyway. If it all works out, I will post the videos to You Tube and send you the links. First they will have to be edited so nothing will happen during the trip. I have seen others do it and like the way they turn out, and you know I am always telling you I wish you could see what I see, so maybe this will be the next best thing. If I like it and it works out easy, I will invest in a better camera for future trips.
Alright, I have rambled enough, I hope you enjoy the trip, I really am excited about visiting Myanmar and I am hoping its going to be as EPIC as I believe it will be. Thanks for following along,
Happy Travels, Don
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