…500 monks emerged in rows four across. They carried flags and overturned alms bowls. When the first group stopped and chanted a prayer, some people in the crowd dared to clap. It was timid at first, but as more monks emerged to begin their protest, the clapping grew louder until the whole crowd seemed overcome by it. A Burmese man leaned toward me. “They have never done this before“, he said. “They clap for freedom“.

The faces in the crowd were excited, part bliss, part terror…

…I noticed that CNN was scrambled. A veil was being lowered between Myanmar and the rest of the world. The Internet was cut, and soldiers from the country moved into the city. The morning I left, I heard that my young guide was looking for me. I can’t be certain why. But a few days later, back in New York, as I was scouring blogs for news of the crisis, I saw his picture. The junta had finally lashed out against the protesters. His forehead was bandaged. His white shirt was spotted red. I have no way to ask him what happened. He’s inside a country a tourist was never meant to see.

These are the words of a tourist who happened to be in Burma during the recent October protests.

Tourism in Burma has been controversial ever since the Jounta’s military coup. There are may ways to maximize one’s positive influence while visiting Burma – from staying in locally owned guest houses, to bringing needed medicine to local communities. A worker gets $1 a day while a tour guide can make $50 a day. Money from tourism trickles down and benefits a larger number of people within local communities. However, I strongly believe that the most important reason to visit Burma is information: it is a closed country from which information hardly escapes. Tourists are usually the only link local people have to the outside world. By visiting, one has the power to make these stories visible, surface local information that has no other way to leave the country.
Thank Myint-U’s thoughts on the tourism boycott campaign: (he is the author of “River of Lost Foot Steps”)

Isolation is the regime’s default condition. It is what fuels the present system. Burma might not become a democracy overnight, but it will certainly improve with more outside interaction. Would Indonesia
be better off if no one had visited during its 30 years of military rule?

Through traveler’s eyes and experience, Burma becomes less isolated. Journalists and foreign aid workers are usually not allowed to work inside the country, but tourists are more than welcome. By taking advantage of this already existing stream of people that visit, experience and return to their homes I see the potential to create a constantly updated pool of information coming behind the country’s closed doors. The tools need to be developed, but the technology exists.

Here is some of what I saw, my stories through the lens, to which I will someday add words:

Beneath the surface, tourism also has its dark side, as Paul Strachan states:

‘the sad fact is that the bulk of Burma’s tourism revenue comes from gambling and prostitution, both controlled by drug cartels and their attendant mafias.’ He mentions that there are specialist travel agencies set up which offer sex package tours for Thai, South Korean, Chinese and Taiwanese groups of men. The girls ‘supplied’ to them have been sold by their destitute and starving families into white slavery. It is claimed that some can be as young as twelve or thirteen years old.

Another tourist describes what he saw while in Burma during the October ‘07 protests:

AN AMERICAN tourist has told of seeing children and pregnant women among the families of pro-democracy supporters, chained together and under heavy guard on a river ferry deep inside Burma.

The encounter indicates for the first time that a crackdown on dissidents now probably extends to their relatives and is being carried out in a thorough and ruthless fashion by the ruling military junta, even in remote parts of the country.

Tourist Scott Herbstman, 41, from New York, said: “These were the families of people who had been arrested during the protests in Yangon. They were in fear for their lives. From the look on their faces and their frequent tears, it was clear that they believed they were travelling to almost certain death.”

One of the shackled women was nine months pregnant, he said. Another prisoner indicated through hand signals that she, too, was pregnant. Four children were among those chained, he added. A two-year-old child and the wife of one young prisoner, whom he believed to be a democracy activist, accompanied the group, free of handcuffs. (source)

[tags] burma, myanmar, travel, protests [/tags]