The Burma Diaries
4/28/05 - Chiang Mai, Thailand
Arrived here in Chiang Mai last night after spending the entire day in planes and airports. All in all, everything went quite smoothly.
The week I spent in Burma was absolutely spectacular - took tons of pictures, some pretty amazing stuff! I've put together a sort of Burma diary that you can read by going to the links below. They are large files so they may take a while to load for you guys out there with slow modems.
Read in the Bankok Post on the plane yesterday that there were a couple of bombings in Yangon last week about the same time I was there. One was in a hotel, another on a bus. Apparently the work of rebel guerillas. I heard nothing about it in Burma as all the news is strictly censored. Democracy through discipline, how they twist the words. All this from a military junta that was defeated in a "free" election by the people in 1990 but has refused to step down and severely punishes people for speaking their mind. If anyone is caught talking politics with foreigners, the penalties can be very severe. A very sad state of affairs indeed. And yet the Burmese people are, without a doubt, the nicest people I've ever met. Seems that the less people have, the nicer they are......
You see propaganda like this all over Yangon - this is what happens when the government gets too powerful and corrupt.