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Myanmar Travel Stories

Mandalay, Myanmar: Mandalay’s Hopes and Sorrows - Story by Sara Hui
- 9th Online Issue

I took a peek through the morning clouds down at Mandalay as we were about to land.  This city, the second largest in Myanmar and made famous by Kipling’s poem of the same name, looked disappointingly barren and abandoned from the air.   We’d caught a pre-dawn flight by Air Mandalay, taking 90 minutes from the capital of Yangon.   Upon entering the surprisingly modern airport, our passports were thoroughly checked, something unusual for a domestic flight, and our details were cross-examined from a report.  It seemed to us that once you are in Myanmar as a foreigner, your every move is monitored at all times. 

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Myanmar: My Man in Myanmar - Story by Anna Maria Espsäter
- 4th Online Issue

It simply couldn’t be done. That’s what every travel agent in Bangkok told us. It just wasn’t possible to travel overland into Myanmar from Sangkhlaburi in western Thailand. We were going to have to book expensive flights from Bangkok to the capital, Yangon with a specialist travel agent who would arrange our visas and we’d have to part with $100 a day to be able to pay a visit. Never mind the fact that this was way over our budget, my friend and I also had no particular desire to pay cold, hard cash straight into the pockets of one of the world’s most notorious military regimes. Instead we decided to risk it and make our own way up to the border town of Sangkhlaburi to see if we could make the crossing - despite the warnings.

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