The Irrawaddy recently spoke to an “informed tourist” who shared his impressions of Burma after a visit to see the country with his own eyes. Below are some observations from a person who has taken the time to look beyond the tourist brochures to gain more than the sanitized experience of Burma promoted by travel agencies and the military authorities.

Irrawaddy: What was your first impression of Burma?

Tourist: Well, after we got off the airplane, we went to wait in line for our stamps to enter the country, and after a pretty long wait, about fifteen, twenty  minutes, we went to the FEC [Foreign Exchange Certificate] exchange counter, my friend and I, and we didn’t want to change 300 FEC because we knew where that money would go, so we told them we’d o­nly be in the country four or five days, and if we could change just $150, that would be nice. And the woman smiled at us and said, “Sure, how much would you like to change?” We said $150 , so she said, “OK. Do you have a present for me and my friend?”

My friend gave her $10 and was very surprised that after being in the country o­nly a short while, she had already experienced the bribes and the way much of the business is done in the country.

I: Did you find it difficult to travel around in the country?

T: Well, transportation was very difficult. Almost every form of transportation I took broke down at some point, except for the train. The buses were difficult to travel in. They were comfortable and air-conditioned, but the roads are so bad. And it’s very strange when you see all the building of hotels and golf courses, and you realize how bad the infrastructure is. Basic travel between Mandalay and Rangoon takes the better part of o­ne day, but at the same time there are golf courses everywhere in Rangoon and in Mandalay and large hotels that stand totally empty. We also got stuck o­n the sandbar, taking the boat from Mandalay to Pagan. o­ne half hour outside of Mandalay, across from Sagaing Hill, we were stuck o­n the sandbar for eight hours, and arrived in Pagan at three, three-thirty in the morning. The boat was strange to me because o­n the bottom deck the local people who pay maybe thirty or forty kyat for the boat are crammed in together, and sitting o­n top of each other with their baskets and their goods and their children, and upstairs are the tourists and the wealthier Burmese who sit in the lounge chairs and in the cabins with beds and private toilets. So it was very difficult for me in that respect, as a tourist, to really feel comfortable in the country. I sort of felt like a colonialist.

I: Did you talk to people about the political situation, or were they afraid to talk?

T: People weren’t that afraid to talk, but they were very careful when they talked about the situation inside the country. I noticed a lot of times, people would look over their shoulder and look over my shoulder when they wanted to talk about politics or economics. But for the most part, people were willing to talk to me, and willing to express their opinions, about what is going o­n in the country.

I: What sort of opinions did they express?

T: The people who I spoke with who had connections outside the country were a little bit apprehensive to talk, but some of the things they said were really interesting, about the political situation now. When we would talk about this, they would be a little nervous and be certain to tell me that this was o­nly their opinion, and not everybody’s opinion. But many people feel that the social tension inside the country is rising, and it is o­nly  a matter of time before people begin to express their discontent. But the o­nly way they can really do that is to organize themselves first . . . .  Some people also said that the soldiers are discontented now with their employment. Their wages are small, and people are wondering whether the soldiers believe in the SPDC ’s  policies, and whether they think that they can continue to be safe under their tutelage.

Other people in the city are upset because their wages aren’t enough to live o­n, and if they want to travel, they have to spend half a month’s salary for bus rides. Gasoline is going up, rice is going up, so a lot of people think that in the next year or so people will not be able to live under these conditions, and something will have to happen,  peacefully or not.

A lot of people I talked to also complained about education. A lot of people believe that because this generation is not able to study freely, the country will lose a generation, and it might take o­ne or two generations of educated people to pull the country back up from where it’s been.

o­ne of the problems is that the universities are closed and a lot of people don’t feel that the quality of the education at university was very good to begin with. Now that the universities are closed, they lose a lot of the education from the social interaction that people have at university, getting different ideas from different people, and from different parts of the country. With the universities closed and the proliferation of distance education learning in the country, that kind of social interaction will be lost and the quality of the people, the bureaucrats and the politicians of the coming generation, will be less than it could be because of the lack of education, the lack of practice in different social situations. So a lot of people complained about that aspect of education.

Also, you have to give the teachers and the people in education incentive to improve. Now school teachers’ salaries are very low, maybe a hundred kyat a day. These people also spend a hundred kyat a day o­n transportation to and from school. And oftentimes they are sent out of the city to meet other people or to acquire materials for the school, and they have to finance these trips o­n their own. Meanwhile, many of their friends are in jail. It’s a very difficult situation for the educators.

The students also have no incentive to learn because they do not believe in the education system.  So it’s a really bad situation for the next couple generations of the country’s people.

I: Did you meet any dissident groups?

T: I didn’t meet any dissident groups, but I met some people who were associated with dissident groups, and those people were perhaps more scared than the other people I was talking to, because they feel that they are personally threatened, that they could wind up in jail anytime. They were very happy to talk to me, but at the same time they were very scared because of their association with people outside of  the country. I  think inside the country, they were not underground and did not want to risk their freedom for meeting a tourist like myself.                                                                  

I: What do you think about the tourism industry in Burma?

T: Tourism in Burma is interesting. I think being in Thailand, people get  spoiled by how easy it is to travel. In Burma, it’s totally different. You feel like it’s more expensive to travel in Burma because it’s more difficult to get off the beaten track. You get funneled into government guesthouses and government hotels, and they try to put you in government taxis to government-sponsored dinners and cultural shows.

Other travelers were kind of upset with being nickeled and dimed to death. You have to pay entrance fees in dollars; kyat is unacceptable. In guesthouses they try to charge you extra dollars, and also will not accept kyat. People who carry your bags in the airport will accept kyat, but they also ask you for dollars. Things like that in the tourism industry make it a little uncomfortable, because it seems to me that the people associated with the tourism industry in Burma are more desperate for your money than say Thailand or Malaysia or the neighboring countries.

It seems that with inflation and with the economy the way it’s going in Burma, people see tourism as a real opportunity to get rich. And the truth is that it’s not a great opportunity for people to get rich, because o­nly a few people can capitalize o­n the tourists. A lot of the backpackers would like to travel as cheaply as possible, and in Burma that’s very difficult, so I think the tourism industry has not been developed.  There aren’t that many backpackers to begin with traveling in Burma. Most people seemed to be o­n package tours from Europe. A lot of the backpackers were Japanese, and there were also quite a few Koreans traveling around. But most people I met were looking for the “authentic Burma  experience,” and knew that going to a lot of the government-sponsored activities was not really what they would like to see.

In some ways, the government’s efforts to develop the tourism industry spoiled the pleasure of being in Burma. For instance, when you go to Mandalay Hill, and you walk up to this amazing temple, and you get to the top of the hill for a look down o­n the old city, the thing that strikes you is the bright lights from the Novetel Hotel which light up the valley.

I: Can you tell us anything about the nightlife in Rangoon?

T: I went to a couple of nightclubs.

As soon as we entered the first club, we were presented with a coupon to redeem for two cans of beer, and we sat down, and within minutes, or seconds even, three women sat down next to me and my two friends. As the bartender was bringing us our beer, o­ne of the women reached over to my friend and put her hand between his legs and smiled and began speaking with my friend in Burmese. That same experience didn’t happen to myself, but I noticed immediately what the purpose of the nightclub seemed to be. It was a lot of people having good fun dancing, and in between the band and the other band, there was a fashion show, and in this fashion show, maybe ten or fifteen models walked around o­n the stage in different outfits. And it seemed to be a place where men could go and pick up their favorite model for, I was told, ten thousand kyat, twenty thousand kyat, all the way up to fifty thousand kyat, for a night with your favorite model. I don’t know how many of these people have that kind of money, but I was told that a lot of the clientele of these clubs were military kids and people with close associations to the military. It’s hard to imagine how anybody else could afford drinks for three or five hundred kyat a beer, women for ten or fifty thousand kyat a night. It seemed very incongruous to me in a country so poor to see such profligate spending o­n women and beer.

The second nightclub we went to was, I was told, o­n the grounds of the old Burma Socialist Programme Party’s land. That club resembled clubs from Thailand or clubs from America, with the bright lights, the strobe lights, and the dancing. The people who were dancing o­n the dance floor were almost a hundred percent Burmese, but they all seemed to have the dance moves of Western dance clubs. They had some good practice, they watched it o­n television in these clubs. It  was interesting to watch because I couldn’t tell if I was in Burma or if I was in Thailand or in a Western disco.

I: Do you have any other comments or observations you would like to make about your trip to Burma?

T: It was interesting to go and feel what Burma is like. If you just stay within the tourist track—Rangoon, Mandalay, Pagan— you do not really see or feel the military presence, you do not see the work camps which you read about in the newspapers. But talking to people, and realizing what the situation is really like, and how afraid certain people are about going to jail, after those experiences, it was very difficult for me to really enjoy the country, because I was sort of seeing it the way local people see it.      

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