Conclusion
Sunrise over the Shwedagon Pagoda |
Young female monks in Mandalay ready to splash our van during the water festival |
The street book sellers of Yangon - now free to sell novels that were banned only five years ago |
It is the story of Burma that has captured my imagination more than anything else. For much of my lifetime the country has lived in total humanitarian darkness - poor, corrupt, authoritarian and isolated. Many believed that it was trapped in a vicious circle and that the power of the generals would never be released - though this iron grip was matched with a ‘steel orchid’, Aung San Suu Kyi, whose courage and dignity carried the hopes of her nation into a new era of optimism. In her own words:
“it is not easy for a people conditioned by fear under the iron rule of the principle that might is right to free themselves from the enervating miasma of fear. Yet even under the most crushing state machinery courage rises up again and again, for fear is not the natural state of civilized man”
The daily commute in Yangon |
“in physical stature she is petite and elegant, but in moral stature she is a giant. Big men are scared of her. Armed to the teeth and they run scared”
A pair of Buddhist monks in Mandalay |
The pariah status of the country over the last half-century has knocked it right off the South East Asian circuit. I hope that this is set to change and I urge anybody who happens to be visiting the area to consider travelling there - as by widening awareness about the country, its people and its problems you help to ensure its continuation along a path to freedom and prosperity. To finish with one last Aung San Suu Kyi quote:
“use your freedom to promote ours”
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