Summer in South East Asia

36 hours in transit and I’m still only halfway there - flight from Toronto to Washington D.C., ten hour layover, twelve hour flight to Doha, Qatar, three hour layover, and a seven hour flight to Bangkok, Thailand, and still another day before I'll get to Yangon/Rangoon, Burma/Myanmar. For two months this summer I'll be working with a legal organization in Burma, before I head to D.C. to work for the rest of the summer at the Native American Rights Fund. And since she missed me so much (and since Burma sounded scary), my mom is spending the first couple of weeks here with me.

Since I wasn't able to get my visa to work in Myanmar from the Canadian embassy, we got to spend a day in Bangkok, which was great! Bangkok, like Myanmar, has beautiful old Buddhist temples in the old part of the city. 

Early the next morning, we got on our final flight, to Yangon. Burma is at a really interesting turning point right now. Under British colonial rule in the 19th century, export agriculture was encouraged and Burma became the world's largest exporter of rice. Burma became independent in 1947, and the same year the national leadership concluded an agreement with the country's ethnic nationalities for a unified Burma. However, Burma was divided country from the beginning, and soon the military staged a temporary take-over to reunify Burma. In 1962, the military under General Ne-Win staged a more permanent coup, and the country began its decline under military dictatorship. Opposition parties were disbanded, the media and other publications were heavily censored, and thousands were imprisoned for acting in opposition to the regime. However, the regime seems to have decided that heavy militarization and a closed society is not longer in its best interests and Myanmar is not under-going a rapid top-down democratization. I'll talk more about that as I write about my work here. 

I love where I'll be staying in Yangon. Its right in the middle of downtown, which means its right in the middle of the busiest part of the city - with tons of street markets, street food, and colourful, old apartments. The downtown is surrounded on the south side by the river and old British colonial buildings, on north side by the Yangon railroad, and on the West side by big fancy hotels. And right in the middle of a traffic circle is a huge Buddhist temple. The downtown is also incredibly multicultural with Chinese, Indian, Burmese, and Japanese street food and open-air restaurants. The smells are incredible and its always busy.

We're about to go for a train ride around the region - so i thought I'd just share some photos for now. I'll be better about updating now that I'm all moved in :)

 Off to keep exploring :)

- Sima