We can’t help but react to the death and destruction in the wake of Saturday’s cyclone in Myanmar with a sense of personal loss; the journals and photos of travelers who have visited the isolated country are some of IgoUgo’s most indelible. As we keep our eyes on the relief progress there and our thoughts with Myanmar’s people, we remember these impressions that members shared after their trips.--Igougo
I have been forwarded a few emails coming out from people who are currently in Burma or who have contacts on the ground there currently. I have posted these below. They give a description of what is going on there and share their great concerns for the coming weeks as the government continues to refuse foreign aid. There are also several suggestions about how you can make a donation.--The Mad Kiwi
Human rights groups have attacked the Lonely Planet guide, saying tourism income supported the junta’s generals who run Burma, also known as Myanmar, and control many sectors of its economy.
But Lonely Planet founder Tony Wheeler argues that tourists put money directly into the hands of individual Burmese and helps to open up a society that has been largely shut off from the rest of the world since 1962.
“I am not going to be an ad agency for Burma, but going there is doing more good than bad,” Lonely Planet founder Tony Wheeler said in an interview with Associated Press.--news.com.au
We were uptight. It a week after a Japanese photographer and untold numbers of locals had been killed when Myanmar military goons fired shots into a crowd of docile protestors. We’d applied for our passports a few months in advance, before they stopped allowing foreigners in, so by chance we ended up on one of the first flights back into the tense Burmese dictatorship after the boarders were reopened.--Jaunt Magazine
Observations and encounters: Burmese women in sarong-like dresses, with streaks of a yellowish pasty substance dabbed on their faces, and the men in their wraparound longyis--a cascading human rainbow of colors and stripes and plaids, usually mixed together... The stares experienced by Westerners, neither friendly nor hostile, just watchfully blank until you make the first overture... The absence of garish advertising, with every movie poster subdued, save for the familiar James Bond scene of a woman's legs framing gun-ready 007; this one attracts a group of men who stare up, mesmerized...--I Witness
Tourism should go where the politicians don’t. It is one of the powerful arguments for tourists to visit Burma, that travellers from the free world should be encouraged to express solidarity with the Burmese by going there and, on their return, spread awareness of the country’s predicament.--Telegraph
You can help out the Burmese people. We decided to go with Doctors Without Borders, but you can also donate via Global Giving and BlogHers Act. Pictures from various photographers on Flickr - click through to access the photostreams.
Pam blogs about travel and other adventures at Nerd's Eye View.
