looks like my plan to trot the soil of myanmar in january is getting all bleak seeing the past few weeks’ turn of events. the borders are closed on all sides and even if i could somehow find my way beyond that anyway, the anti-junta protests are getting bigger by the day. today’s demos turned up over 20,000 of its city population.
okay la, it is honestly about time that the country pulls its socks up and decides if it want to be a communist country or democratic. me personally, i cannot say that i have a formed opinion over either mechanism of governance. i just wish peace could be achieved in the most diplomatic of means possible, either way. it is bright as daylight that the trade embargo and economic sanctions are not working. locking up poor aung san only creates an irritating thorn in the junta’s garbs because just about every other UN country is scratching at it.
while all of this is a yawn to debaters who have been throwing arguments on its socio-political issues since they began sucking their thumbs, to the traveller, closed borders in a rioting country simply means a visa to china – which is really a shame because i am so keen to see the bagan complex. and even if myanmar is able to sort itself out by say, early next year to subscribe willingly to being either socialism or democracy, it would still be another two years at least before it would be able to iron out its parliamentary and bilateral issues.
of course, this is not the first rioting season in myanmar, monks or no monks, so the EVEN IF of a conclusion is a pretty cynical one. lonely planet myanmar begins with a disclaimer if one should even consider making the trip to myanmar.
as heavy as it is, i think it’s time to re-route.
