Burma, December '02

I figured I should address the politics of our visit to Myanmar/Burma first before actually diving into the usual travel details, since Stoli (and many others if anyone ever read this) will probably disapprove of visiting a country run by such a nasty regime. There's no doubt the rulers of Burma are a nasty bunch, and to prove the point, until recently they went by the supernasty name of SLORC. And there's no doubt that their archnemesis, Aung San Suu Kyi, is a genuine hero, and by far the most popular choice for a leader if Burma were ever to have free elections. But the fact is they won't, and no amount of boycotting will ever change this. The country has been completely isolated since the '60's. It sits on enormous natural resources wealth, and the dictators will always be able to use that wealth to prop up their regime. So cutting off trade and travel links with the country unfortunately has no impact on the regime, but as anyone living in the country will tell you, causes enormous economic hardship for the people. The country is surrounded by some of the most dynamic economies in the world, and they are just getting poorer. The military is of course repressive, although for the large majority of people who aren't rebels, freedom fighters etc. they don't notice this repression in their daily lives. What they do notice is their economic stagnation and would love to be able to break this political logjam and just get on with building a better economic life. So since these economic boycotts won't ever cause regime change, but do at least help some people, I think on balance you should go. I also realize this isn't a popular position. One last practical issue for us is that we love to travel, and the human rights records of most countries is pretty crappy. Burma ends up on one end of a spectrum, but if I really sat down and thought about the human rights record of each country I visited, I probably wouldn't leave Scandinavia and this blog would be pretty short.

Oh, and I just threw in the kids on the water buffalo photo because I thought it was cute, though admittedly off topic.