Observations about Myanmar

1) I was expecting to see lots of police and army around and we hardly saw any.  We did however see rules and regulations from the ruling party in most of the hotels and sometimes notices explaining where we could and couldn’t go.  

2)  Information is difficult to come by and we had no idea there had been trouble in an area we had ridden through on a bus journey up to Mandalay until we left the country.

3)  It is difficult to get a handle on a country when you can't ask questions.  Asking even simple questions about an average persons lot, like how the school system works, probably wouldn't get you in trouble but might get the person answering in hot water if they were overheard telling the truth about the corruption rather than giving the party line.

4) Corruption is endemic.  The taxi driver gave a cut of our fare to the guy running the taxi rank outside of our hotel, who then gave a cut to the hotel.  Those were just the ones we saw and there were probably a few more in between we missed. We were told that even if you were really bright, unless you paid you couldn't pass your exams and if you were not bright but had enough money you could buy a good grade.

5) Education is very expensive, new rules are in place to give primary education to all, although how much that is currently being implemented is a mute point, but the official price after that plus the necessary bribes means its only afforable for the elite.

6) We didn’t see as many children playing as we have done in the rest of Asia. We are not sure whether this was because there were less children or because they were kept indoors.  When we went to a Shan village however there were masses of children running around so maybe its a cultural thing.

7)  Many tourists say "The burmese are such a friendly people".  They are a very open and smiley people and say hello if they know the word and we as outsiders are still unusual enough to be interesting.  But at times I found them abrupt and as with all countries there are some nice and some not so nice people. We also found that they don't offer information, you have to guess the right question first.  We asked our hotelier whether there was a bank where we could change money.  He said no it was shut.  After much discussion amongst ourselves about what we could do in our predicament I then asked if we could change money in the hotel and was told yes.

8) Its the poorest place we have been to on our travels.  The markets were full of things you might need - food, tools etc: but very few things you might want.  The pictures on the walls  of peoples homes were posters or calenders.  

9) Pictures of Aung San Suu Kyi and her father are shown in lots of hotels, restaurants and homes with apparent impunity.  Despite the support for her and her party being overwhelming in the country, I thought open and public support would have been prohibited.

10) Its an extraordinary place, very beautiful and very cultured but with so much going on under the surface I think you would need to live there for many years to even begin to understand the country and people.  In fact this is the case with many of the countries we have been to with their complex and often tragic histories and current corrupt politics but in this instance the sense of being deliberately excluded was very apparent.