Opportunity Blog

Category: Myanmar

Come with us to Myanmar!

Meet new people.

This and last year I have been talking about our trips to Myanmar to see the progress Nargis Library Recovery is making in getting books out to the people who have the least and need them the most. It appears we’ll be doing this every year around December – January when the weather is great and travel is not hindered by storms.

We visit temples and other points of interest, and we also visit a lot of libraries and schools. Those with interests in libraries, education and community development will enjoy this trip the most. It’s great fun and each year we learn a bit more about how things work, or don’t work, in Myanmar.

Closed for maintenance? Somewhere in the delta area south of Bogalay. There were working ones a hundred feet on up the trail.

The trip is not particularly strenuous. We’ve had a number of people in their late seventies and early eighties along with no more problem than anyone else.

The trip costs are paid completely by the travelers. Nargis Library does not contribute to these costs in any way whether it is a board member or other interested party coming along. This year the trip went from 8 December to 18 December and cost about $800 US per person exclusive of the airfare to get to Yangon. We also ask for a $200 donation to Nargis Library Recovery. This year three of our guests on our trip used that donation to finance the staff training and first two years of maintenance and staff salary of our new library at Thingangon. You can get bargains for both travel and helping out costs in Myanmar.

We’ll visit the delta areas, some of which need special permit. Enjoy traveling on the water in Myanmar

You can inexpensively add on a side trip before or after. The tour operator we used will work with you on this. In a future post I’ll tell you how this year Sue and I followed this trip with four nights at the Amata resort at Ngapali beach for about $130 per night. If it gets more luxurious than that we don’t need to know about it.

If you are interested post a comment here. If you require more details than I can answer here I’ll email them to you. Also, you can always get more information at the Nargis Library site.

Myanmar is like visiting Thailand fifty years ago. While we are working hard to change that fact, at the moment it makes for a very interesting trip.

January 5, 2011
Who Does What in Myanmar

With World Vision heading toward “jungle schools” in the Myanmar delta. Part of our group is in the preceding boat.

Some aid gets to the people of the delta area of Myanmar. For every $50 in international aid, both government and non government, to Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam, Myanmar gets $2.50. I was told this by a “Burma expert” and later had to check it out with original UN sources for a magazine article. It’s really true.

This lack of aid is only partially due to the government restrictions on NGO’s operating in Myanmar. The other, and I think major, reason is due to the sanctions on Myanmar by the US, EU and Australia. Most NGO’s are from these countries, and sanctions discourage them. We (Nargis Library Recovery) had to get a special permit from the US Treasury department to do what we do in Myanmar. You don’t need that for other places.

In order to stay in Myanmar and do anything at all, NGO’s normally do not publicly complain about issues with the government. Sometimes a fuss is kicked up. You have to pick your battles. If you want to help political prisoners, monitor their elections for fairness or get government officials to do things differently that is one thing. If you want to help people in non political areas such as food and agriculture or education and libraries that is more straightforward.

By staying away from sensitive issues NGO’s can operate pretty free from government interference. The government does not bother with us. I think most of the money it gets from us is our 10% hotel tax and some airport fees when we visit. It does ask that we do not bring in books about Myanmar governmental issues, with explicit sexual content and religious books specifically aimed at proselytizing. It does not check our books, it expects us to do that.

Given all that, there are some NGO’s doing significant work in Myanmar. One of the best is World Vision. They have 850 workers in Myanmar, with 63 staff in the Bogalay delta area. Among other things they operate some non formal education schools out in the delta villages. Recently they have started helping us distribute our books among 50 libraries they either support or work with.

The Bogalay area director, Naw Maureen Kolay accompanied us in two of their boats to visit schools in two delta villages. These boats had the only two outboard motors I have ever seen in Myanmar. For small boats in Myanmar they were very fast, although most of the runabouts on US lakes would leave them behind.

Some school children await us at the landing at Auk Magyi village.

We could not see the landing for Auk Magyi until we were nearly on top of it, and climbing up to it was a bit of an adventure for some of us. The children and some staff members led us along a short trail to the school.

Sue working with the kids. She’s now talking to WV about coming in with Gail, an Aussie master teacher, to do teacher training in the Bogalay area next year.

A little help while leaving. School building is behind.

It is great that WV is setting up these schools for children who cannot go on a normal schedule because of their work load with their family. It is a great example of how help often must be given in Myanmar: you do what you can. It is not ideal and it could be much better if circumstances would allow. The kids come when they can. Often education is disrupted as the family moves to find work. There were only a few books here, some of them from us. They need both more Burmese and some English children’s books here and at the other WV schools.

Naw Maureen Kolay, director of WV efforts in the Bogalay delta area, talks with Sue.

Way more should and could be done to help. In the meantime, NGO’s like World Vision, Nargis Library Recovery and about thirty others operating in the delta area will do what they can. While it may not be much, there is little enough going on there that it still makes a big impact.

January 4, 2011
Getting There is Half the Fun

Sue and I enjoy river breezes on deck on the river ferry Yamone Aung.

In Myanmar, getting there is half the fun, whether on their hand crafted roads or on the river. Especially the river. Even though Thingangon was a major village (it even shows on Google maps, but in the wrong place) it was accessible only by boat. The nine in our party were based at Pathein, and required a fast boat to reach the island and return within the day. The only boat fast enough was a 20 knot 120 foot river ferry that normally transports 160 people. This allowed us a one way time of five hours. It was a bit pricey for Myanmar, about the same as renting a 19’ runabout in the North Idaho town from where I come, but our price included the fuel and the crew!

Our boat was too long! Throughout the trip I tried to get a photo of the entire boat. I never could back up enough to do it without buildings or too many trees getting in the way.

Even so, we had to start at four AM on December 14, which turned out to be a great time. It was still completely dark by the time we got away from Pathein. There were no lights of any kind along the river, and no light pollution visible anywhere in the sky. This is one nice thing about being in a country which has large areas without electrical power. There must have been a meteor shower going on, because some in our party saw six. I saw four, as many as I saw near Waco, TX when I went out to see the Perseid shower earlier this year. I never could get away from the light pollution of Waco or nearby towns that time.

I just checked on the internet, and found that the Geminid shower peaked the nights of Dec 13 and 14. How about that? The first time I’m in good night seeing in years.

The first few hours in the dark were definitely the high point of that trip. I could see many more stars than I could even in Thailand. I don’t remember stargazing like that since I was a kid out in the country in North Idaho. The weather at that time was a bit cool due largely to our 20 knot speed, requiring a windbreaker. Once the sun was up for awhile we no longer needed the jackets.

Coming into the village where we took a morning coffee break.

Inside the village “coffee shop” on the pier. Clockwise from the foreground. Dave Leuthold, Carolyn Leuthold, Sue, Lyda Adair, Bill Cochran, Dennis Taylor, Daw Ah Win. Arm in the lower right supplied by Dr. Thant Thaw Kaung.

After sunrise Sue took a nap on deck. We passed a few small settlements, but only one or two of what I would call a small village. We stopped at one of these for morning coffee and a snack, after which we resumed our trip to the far south.

When we got to our destination there is only one boat landing which already had a boat at it, so we tied up beside and debarked through that boat to the pier. After a short walk out Nargis Library Recovery group arrived at our first new library building, which I describe in the previous post.

Thingangon Village. We landed through the open area in the center of the large boat on the right.

Our captain and crew.

The return trip got us back to Pathein after dark, in time for a late candle lit dinner under the stars and then to rest for our next day with World Vision to the east.

January 2, 2011
Back from Myanmar (Again)

David Leuthold, chairman for Nargis Library, and Daw Ah Win from the donor group cut the ribbon for the new Thingangon library.

I have used this title before. Sue and I again went to Myanmar and visited a number of libraries supplied by Nargis Library Recovery as well as our first new library building. The building was opened in Thingangon which is very close to the southern end of the delta area, downriver from Pathein. The building is in a village of seven thousand on Middle Island, a large island in the delta. The library serves the entire island of about forty thousand people.

Pathein, Thingangon and Middle Island can all be found on Google maps, but both Thingangon and Middle Island shown there are not where we went. First find “Pathein, Ayeyarwady, Myanmar” then look due south and about two thirds of the way to the ocean you will see Labutta. Thingangon is in the Labutta township and is southwest of Labutta on that same finger of land.

After our boat delivered us to the pier, a few minutes walking through the village streets brought us to the new library. The second plaque above the door says “Donated by United Nations Women’s Guide of Vienna, Myanmar Book Aid and Preservation Foundation and Nargis Library Recovery.” The first of these three is a group of Women from Vienna who donated $8000 to us. This, along with local help for labor and some materials, covered the cost of the new building. Myanmar Book Aid is the Myanmar organization which is the counterpart to Nargis Library Recovery, which is a U.S. NGO.

Daw Ah Win, a native of the region and now a U.N. librarian in Vienna and member of the group who donated for the building, was traveling with us. We met with the local library board and had a ribbon cutting ceremony to officially open the building. You can read more details about this library here. Now that the building is built, we will do what we have been doing elsewhere in Myanmar, supply books for it.

Thingangon cyclone shelter.

Thingangon is one of the places where the government built a large cyclone shelter, so this area was hit by Nargis with considerable loss of life. The shelter is built on very sturdy columns so that flood waters can flow underneath while the people are protected on the second floor.

Some teachers at the school gate.

A boys classroom in the school.

The school library.

After visiting the shelter we went to the school that serves this and surrounding villages. It has three buildings for elementary, middle and high school. We visited some boys classrooms and got a good reception from the students. The library for these schools was housed in a couple of cabinets. For English I found about six copies of one book “Money for a Motorcycle”. We’ll have to get more books to this school as well.

Village power plant fired by burning rice husks.

Before leaving we visited the power plant that supplies electricity during the evening hours. This will allow our library to stay open until 10 PM.

We had a great visit. All of us, especially our four new people, returned with a better sense of the needs of the delta area and how the little we have done will be stretched to serve a large number of people.

January 1, 2011
Tourists in Myanmar: More Good than Harm

I have talked about travel in Myanmar in the past. I will certainly be going there again when I can. Just to keep you up to date, here is a link to a recent article on a website sponsored by what I think is a group in opposition to the government. Please read Derek Tonkin’s comment below the article. I think this explains the often heard phrase “Don’t spend tourism dollars in Myanmar, the money just goes to the government .”

May 5, 2010
Disaster Response, Haiti and Myanmar

The crisis in Haiti has everyone’s attention, including mine. I will not comment about it because I know next to nothing about that area. Some have been drawing parallels between it and the Myanmar crisis of two years ago. In Haiti aid is bottled up because the infrastructure is largely destroyed. In Myanmar there was not much infrastructure to be destroyed in the delta area, but the thing that caught everyone’s attention was that aid was not getting through simply because the generals controlling the military government would not let it through.

I do not wish to appear as an apologist for the military government of Myanmar, but there were things that the U.S. and European countries did that may have encouraged the general’s response. The best summary of this is in the second and third paragraphs of the first page of a letter from Derek Tonkin, whose site networkmyanmar.org tracks what happens in Myanmar. I can’t say it better, so I won’t.

January 19, 2010
The Ultimate Trip?

Just as we are getting ready for a southern Thailand trip, Derek Tonkin sent this about vacation travel in Myanmar. I think the tide is turning on tourism to Myanmar. In the recent past you might have been viewed anywhere from politically incorrect to a supporter of a brutal military government if you decided to take a vacation there. Derek refers to a quote from a recent Times Online article about whether you should travel to Myanmar:

“No, said Aung San Suu Kyi, Burma’s courageous opposition leader, in the 1990s when the junta began admitting tourists because it was so desperate for foreign currency.
Yes, with certain provisos, said every diplomat, aid worker, opposition politician, monk and Burmese citizen that we questioned. Circumstances have changed, they argued.”

Note that Aung San Suu Kyi made her statement in the 90’s. It is less certain what her opinion would be at this time.

Two years ago at this time Sue and I spent nearly a month there on two separate trips. One of these lasted 14 days and cost us $910 each. Ordinarily from the U.S. you would pay an additional $1200 + $250 for round trip flights to Bangkok and from there round trip flights to Yangon. It would have been $720 if we could have gotten our group of seven up to ten people. This included our guide, tour bus all the time, one in country flight, boat transport on the river, various horse carriages, etc. It also included breakfast. The other meals were great and did not cost much.

In include a few pictures from that trip out of thousands. I just could not stop. Here is a video of a wedding we crashed south of Yangon. Our guide just happened to see it in a village square as our bus was passing by. They had no problem with us except that we had to stay for pictures with the bride and groom and their families.

Click here to view more pictures from our Myanmar trip.

The Ultimate trip? Sue and I have traveled to many places and had some great times. I cannot place any of those trips above that one. It’s easy to go. You can get a round trip to Bangkok on any of the internet ticket sites. If you cannot get the Bangkok to Yangon flights easily from the U.S. you can try through the Bangkok agency that I use. Ask for Bill. Finally, to arrange the travel in Myanmar I recommend Exotissimo in Yangon. I would not be surprised if the agency mentioned in the Times article uses Exotissimo for their Myanmar arrangements’.

While you will not need to get a visa to get into Thailand you do need one for Myanmar. Ask Exotissimo about their visa on arrival service. At fifteen dollars it is the only way to fly.

I encourage you to go. I do think the tide is turning. At present, in tourist terms, Myanmar is “unspoiled”. Translation: the economy is so bad and the people so poor that there has been little new construction since the British left after WWII and the people still live like they did hundreds of years ago. Enough tourism and engagement with the West will probably raise the economic level and allow for a bit more of a modern life style. Like maybe some medicine when their children get sick.

It is a great time to come to Myanmar. Help us spoil it.

December 13, 2009
Myanmar and the U.S.

Mr. Dinger did sent a picture of the U.S. Embassy in Myanmar. As I said before (08 Nov 09) the Embassy is quite impressive, and indicates that although the U.S. has a lot of differences with the government there, it is certainly taking Myanmar seriously. As I remember, there was more in the compound on the other side, past the right edge of the picture, but am not sure. I would guess there are a number of countries that have an ambassador named as such that do not have an Embassy like this one.

As I see it, the U.S. wants a representative democracy to develop in Myanmar, and may wish to withhold some things until it does. Myanmar is hurting in many ways right now. There are countries, such as Singapore, Vietnam and even China that are not democracies by still have a good economy and are busy developing a better life for their people, albeit with some restricted freedoms. Maybe not the best situations, but better than some others I can think of.

When people are hurting badly enough, I suppose I am willing to compromise and not ask for the best. Second best might be worth looking into. Of course, this is not a request to Mr. Dinger. He is sworn to uphold U.S. policy. It’s the president, congress and maybe secretary of state that need to do better by the people of Myanmar, even if its government is not what they would like.

November 14, 2009
The Rest of Myanmar

I took over 1200 pictures this last time and so am showing only very few here. Sue, Hector and I had a cloud/sunset photo contest on the way back from the river village. The sky was spectacular with Monumental cloud formations. The camera just cannot show what it is like to be there.

I do have a few hotel/restaurant pictures to show. We stayed at the Winner Inn this time. It was fine: a clean large room with air and hot shower. The staff was friendly and we found we could order, get served and finish an American style breakfast within fifteen minutes if necessary. Normally if I am staying in Yangon I like the Park Royal, shown in the second and third pictures. It is even more downtown than the Winner, large and reasonably luxurious for $55 per night at the moment. I would compare it to hotels in Bangkok in the 150 to 200 dollar range. Meals at its buffet were always good, even for someone as picky as me. I stayed there for a week on my previous visit.

Thant took us to a number of really nice restaurants. Again, in Myanmar you will find prices sharply lower than Bangkok or other Asian cities, but the quality and variety of these Yangon restaurants could not be beat.

We ate lunch at the Feel restaurant our first day back from Bogalay. Everything was good, with a very wide selection as you can see. You pick several vegtable/salad/side dishes and hand them to the staff. You also can pick from the various food trays at the main counter. The first picture in the second row shows what our table looked like when we started. We tried all kinds of Myanmar food here, all very good. Later, we picked Myanmar style deserts from the trays outside in front.

There had to be a shopping expedition to the Bogyoke Aung San market, a five to ten minute walk from the Park Royal. It has over 1600 shops. Hector got some jewelry for his wife in the second picture. The driver’s seatback was held up by wire wound between the headrest stem and the upper seatbelt stay in the cab we took to the market. Note the end of the door in the cab Sue and I took to a laquerware shop later – no latch. I discovered this as I was riding in the front seat. Nearly all cars, cabs or private, are quite old (see video) in Myanmar. On the balance, I still think its safer to be in a car in Myanmar than in Thailand. Nearly all the cars were built before air bags had been invented, but driving is slower and traffic is much less.

November 11, 2009
‘s No Place Like Myanmar

In the previous post I talked about meeting ambassadors, captains of industry, etc. Where else would someone like me, who the local property tax collector will barely give the time of day to in my own country, meet people like that? Myanmar is the only place I can think of.

There really is very little going on in Myanmar in the way of NGO involvement, trade (remember the sanctions) or tourism from the West. John Badgley first told me this, but I since had to look it up from original sources to prove it to someone else. In each of Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam, the total spending, per person, by all outside governments and NGO’s for social welfare of any kind is about fifty dollars per person per year. In Myanmar it is under two and a half dollars.

Not much is happening here, so when something does it is noticed. I suppose for the same reason whatever we can do here, even if small by many measuring sticks, has a large relative impact. Not much is happening in one way, but for us a lot is happening. It’s all relative.

So who else did we meet? One place that receives books and help from us is the ICE-Youth (Information Center for Every Youth) library in Yangon (see video). This has been running since 2002 and is staffed completely by volunteer students. It has both English and Burmese language books. The photo shows the library staff. At any given time normally only three or four of them would be on duty. What kind of students volunteer to run a library? Each year a test similar to our SAT test is given to 300,000 graduating students in Myanmar. Meeting us there were the students who placed first, second and fourth in this test. I took the third photo on the right showing the top top of a small cart near the front desk. It shows what many of these students and others who come into this library are thinking about.

Myanmar Egress is an association which teaches as well as coordinates activities of students and graduates in Yangon. Students in the class pictured are studying international economics. Immediately after cyclone Nargis aid was delayed in getting to the victims. This is the organization that first got aid to the south, and then quickly trained other NGO’s how to operate in the south and cooperate with the Myanmar government. Their English language library is important to them. The librarians pulled a number of books off the shelves, and there on the inside cover was our stamp.

We visited several other no less impressive organizations helping to move Myanmar into the international community. One thing the people in all these organizations agree on is that education and knowledge is the key, with knowledge and education in English being a big part of that, and our books will form a key part of that.

The round table was held on the 31st at the Park Royal hotel in Yangon. In addition to John, Thant, Hector, Sue and myself several other board members from Myanmar came along with a lady named Ju (blue dress) who is currently Myanmar’s most famous author. Thant’s father U Thaw Kaung, to Sue’s right, moderated the meeting. He is on the board or heading up any non governmental foundation or organization involved with libraries on the national level in Myanmar that I am aware of. Dr. May Moe Nwe, part owner of the bookstore along with Thant is at the right. She is also a board member and secretary of Myanmar Book Aid and Preservation Foundation. This meeting summarized accomplishments so far and planned our activities through the end of this year. John describes it more fully here.

I need to qualify what I said at the beginning of the previous post. I actually have met and am now friends with Derek Tonkin the former British ambassador to Vietnam, Thailand and Cambodia over a span of many years. I met him two years ago. What country do you suppose we were in when we met?

November 9, 2009