Myanmar/Burma, part 1.

Now, let me take you back a couple of months to one of my favorite ports... I must warn you, this will be long, but hopefully interesting. I'll probably break it up into different posts for your reading ease.

Myanmar/Burma was the port that I'd been most conflicted about since I began reading about it and also the port that I knew the least about before the trip began. It was also the first country that I've traveled to that is governed by a military regime.

I learned that it is a country in which many folks have protested travel due to the oppression of the government on the people, the lack of support from the UN and other various reasons. A lot of tourism money gets put back into the government and it's important to be really careful where the tourist dollar or rather, the kyat, (pronounced chat) goes if one doesn't want to give a percentage to the government.

Myanmar's/Burma's name was changed by the military government in 1989. The folks that changed it felt that Burma was a vestige of European colonialism. There are many opposition activists that don't recognize the name change because the argue that such a drastic change should be approved by a national referendum, thus, it is a political issue.

I had no idea what to expect while traveling in this country and opted to do a couple of the SAS trips as I wasn't quite sure how difficult/safe independent travel would be in Burma. I'd signed up for these trips early in the voyage and after I began reading more and more about Burma and travel within the country, regretted it, as I didn't know which companies we would be using and how much of my money would go somewhere I didn't want it to go.

I had been assigned as a trip leader for 2 of the trips and decided not to back out of that privilege/responsibility. As it turned out, I'm glad I didn't back out - even though we all know how I feel about group travel - I could have not experienced some of these things that I'll write about on my own.