The answer is a bit complex and multifaceted. For one thing, Heidi's father had a Burmese friend who studied with him at Harvard Divinity School whom he was unable to arrange to visit on his way back from a Fulbright study program in India back in the late 1950s or 60s, sometime around the time that the military control of the country was initiated and easy access to both Burma and the Burmese disappeared.
Later (nearly fifty years ago now), while we were Peace Corps Volunteers in neighboring Thailand, Heidi was essentially denied access to Burma altogether when on a school trip including a brief cross-border excursion into what even by then had become a mysterious place indeed.
For our entire time in Southeast Asia in the 60s, one could only hope under the best of circumstances to stop over in Rangoon (now Yangon) for a twenty-our hour period before having to leave and fly on somewhere else. Visas just weren't available for stays longer than a single day. All this served to accomplish essentially was to make travel there even more something to which to aspire. That desire has persisted all these years since then.
However, for decades that followed, Burma (by then known as Myanmar) was essentially off the international community's radar altogether as military control persisted despite sporadic attempts to throw off the junta's political control. Student protests in 1988 and again (this time joined by Buddhist monks) in 2008 failed to dislodge the military and, in fact, instead led to even harsher conditions being impossed on the Burmese population.
One intriguing figure did emerge, that of Aung San Suu Kyi, the daughter of the Burmese general who led the country out from under British colonial rule shortly after the end of WWII (but who was assassinated in 1948 soon thereafter). She first came to prominence when she stood up to the Burmese crackdown on the 1988 student protest.
For much of the two decades that followed she was under house arrest (despite being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991). In 2008 the political party which she led (having been released from house arrest) won a democratic majority but was denied control of Burma's parliament, and Aung San Suu Kyi was once again detained.
She was eventually released once again in 2010 as the military government began to loosen its authoritarian control; and the following year she won an elected seat in the parliament. In September 2012 she finally made her way to Stockholm to accept the Peace Prize she had been awarded more than twenty years earlier.
As a result of this recent softening of military rule, the boycott mounted by the United States against Burma decades ago also began to be loosened. Aung San Suu Kyi, too, encouraged a return of tourists and international travelers to Burma.
And so, when Overseas Adventure Travel initiated its first organized tours to Burma this year, we jumped at the opportunity to be among the first and signed up for our October trip. Lee, always intrigued by the chance to add yet another Southeast Asian nation to his list of places visited, was particularly enthusiastic.
Both of us became increasingly intrigued as we began to realize Burma in 2012 seemed to many "fifty years behind the times" -- which meant it likely resembled Thailand "back in the day" when we served there as Peace Corps Volunteers. Visiting now, we thought, might well turn into quite a nostalgic trip into the past for the both of us.
It's with great anticipation, then, and with multiple possibilities in mind -- and some anxiety -- that, in just a couple of days, we fly off half way 'round the world to begin our exploration of this very intriguing destination.
We're very much looking forward to the experiences ahead -- and hope you are as well!
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