Wrapping up Myanmar

I have been thinking for a while about how to bring our trip to Myanmar to a close in this blog, so whilst summarising our last couple of days in the country I will make a few of my own observations about the place. I have also chosen to post it on a historic day for the people of Myanmar as their first freely elected parliament in over 50 years has its first session today;

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-35456982

I am still worried as the military government has a history of going back on these sorts of leaps of progress; and it's even put a law in place to allow the military to take over again if it deems it best since the election all the way back in November. This delay in allowing the new government to form since the election has me worried; people we spoke to were shocked to hear we hand over to a new party the next day. Someone has told them to expect it to happen months later... 

I truly hope this is an era for peace, progress and fairness for the people of Myanmar; my goodness they deserve it. The last century bought them British rule and the mistreatment, disrespect and pillage of natural resources and the economy that it brought. If you don't know much about how we acted throughout our empire have a read of George Orwells Burmese Days; eye opening. The joke in Myanmar is that Orwell in fact wrote a trilogy about the country; Burmese Days, Animal Farm and 1984..

We did at least introduce schooling, infrastructure and healthcare, unlike some invading European countries... Later in the 20th century the suffering under the military government was immense; brutality, being constantly watched, people disappearing, protests being ruthlessly crushed, disrespect and persecution for the varied ethnic groups in the country, the list goes on. And somehow everyone we met was friendly, positive and glad to have us visiting. People wanted our photos, wanted to talk to us about who we were and why we were visiting, wanted to practice their English on us and wanted to find out more about our country and tell us more about theirs. It was inspiring, if only more people could have their patience and positivity.

Our final day or two in the country involved travel; starting with an early boat across Inle Lake. The sun was rising, a cool mist hung on the very flat water and we watched the place waking up. Morning washes in the lake, children cleaning their teeth hanging off the sides of their houses and piling into small teak boats to go to school. Fishermen drowsily setting off into the lake for the morning. After that it was a short drive back to Heho airport for a one hour flight back to Yangon, excellent organisation albeit very manual. 

We met up with our previous Yangon guide later in the day, he'd offered to take us around a local souvenir market. He took us into a jade store saying it had the best prices, I got a bit suspicious that we were going to get a hard sell. But that was me not thinking the best of people from Myanmar again; he actually wanted to buy us a present each :) we were so touched.

I wanted to finish our time in Myanmar by going back to Shwedagon Pagoda, for sunset, and it didn't disappoint. It was wonderful to spend a few hours wondering around, taking in the changing colours of the gold as the sun set, people watching and, of course, helping students practice their English.

We were both sad to leave this beautiful, inspiring and captivating country.