Most guidebooks list their three must-see tourist attractions in Burma as the Shwedagon Pagoda, the temples of Bagan, and Inle Lake. The latter was the last stop on our whirlwind tour through the country. As we visited off-season, water levels in this freshwater lake were low. The views from the boat were nonetheless extremely pretty.
Nga Phe Chaung post office on stilts
The ancient temples of Bagan are another highlight on Myanmar’s tourist trail. While not as known internationally as say Angkor Wat, the 2,000-odd temples that litter this 26-mile plateau in central Burma are no less impressive. Most of them date back to the 11-13th centuries AD and frequent earthquakes and general decay left many of them in a state of disrepair. Until Burma’s junta embarked on its controversial beautification project. 
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In preparation of my stay in Burma, I have been reading three books, mainly on the country’s politics and history. This post is meant both as a reminder to myself as well as a primer to those facing a similar task – how to get up to speed with this most fascinating place.
It’s been a while that I wrote about my book project on some of Tokyo’s iconic 60s/70s buildings. Work has been ongoing over the last couple of months and the project has been growing in scope and depth. There is now four confirmed chapters written by four different authors. Architectural photographer Manuel Oka has started taking shots of the buildings. Here are some of his photos:
Yangon has plenty of dilapidated but more or less intact colonial-era architecture. Decades of international isolation saved the city from masses of overzealous real estate developers. As Burma is opening up, people have begun to wonder whether this heritage can be kept alive.
The Shwedagon Pagoda was the first of the major sights on our list in Rangoon. Both its dimensions and the lavish use of gold create an amazing ambience that make this one of the most spectacular examples of Buddhist architecture.
We have arrived in Rangoon, capital of Burma/Myanmar, yesterday and already covered quite a bit of ground. Despite the torrid heat. I thought I’d put up a few iPhone shots that I took yesterday to mark the first of hopefully many posts to come while we’re in this fascinating country for the next four weeks.
I figure this blog has been turning into a bit of a travelog as of late: me and my wife are on the road, and after spending a bit more than a week with family in India, we’re now in Bangkok. It is great to be back. Fresh out of high school, my first backpacking trip across South East Asia started here in 2001.
Monk taking photo at Wat Arun, Bangkok
A photo of the Taj Mahal in Agra can’t really capture the magic of the place. Despite the myriad visitors I found the place to be serene. I was lucky in that the light on the day of our visit was not too bright, bringing to the fore the magic glow of the marble used to build the tomb.
My wife and I are on a short stopover in India, where we are meeting her family. We spent two nights in Varanasi, a holy city on the banks of the river Ganges. Two boat trips revealed the changing face of the Ghats – the stairs leading to the water – and the activity surrounding them. The views were most beautiful just after sunrise and I thought I’d share a few of them without too much of the regular commentary.
