Myanmar: Life under military rule
Intention should not be the sole arbiter of action, I thought it was yet there is more. The outcome of choices cannot be foreseen, the interplay of random events, people far wiser than myself have plotted a course in relation to Myanmar, still I decided to go. I convinced myself that it was ok to go, my own desire for something new, I've travelled to many dictatorships in the same category as Myanmar, other repressive governments, repressive cultures, repressive religions. In the 1998 I wanted to go, but had read Aung San Suu Kyi and heeded the call for a boycott, in 2005 I considered again but decided no. Then this year I went and this is what happened.
Myanmar: Why a military government
A new perspective on why, or why not, maybe its better said as the lack of why. There are many charming facets of Myanmar culture but the military government is a real conundrum. How can a country have such peaceful people and have such a violent repressive government at the same time? It is the same people, the military are not a different ethnic group, or different religion, there is the pervasive Buddhism, the respect for the monks yet they can fire on them at the same time, the reverence for Aung San and the fight against British colonialism yet at the same time the demonization of his daughter.
Myanmar: Palaung Hill Tribe of Shan state
Into the Palaung and Lisu Hill Tribes of Shan state in Myanmar through winding broken roads, villages perched on the top of hills, each village with a Pagoda and a monastery, a collection of Monks, novices, smiles that are impossibly wide, bamboo huts clinging to the side of a hill and the freshest food directly from the field.
Myanmar – Nat Pwe, Spirits, generals and Smiles
Myanmar, once known as Burma, is the jewel of South East Asia, IMHO, the people, the culture is a hybrid, at the intersection of three great civilizations. The pervasive Buddhism that seeps into even corner of life is magnified by the backwardness of the military regime. There are few parts to this essay, spirits then guns/politics. I’ll start with the most interesting, the Nat, the spirit world, the pre-Buddhist animist worship. The Buddhists do syncretic better than the other major religions who always seem to co-exist uncomfortably with anything that wasn’t written down in their own dogma.
