A haphazard chronicle of my inevitable misadventures during a year in Vietnam and points east.

p.s. I'll be pitifully grateful if you send me email during my exile: TravelerKaty@hotmail.com

October 2002 November 2002 December 2002 January 2003 February 2003 March 2003 April 2003 May 2003 June 2003 July 2003 August 2003 September 2003 October 2003 November 2003 February 2006 March 2006 May 2006

 
Yangon, Myanmar

Just south of the Sule Pagoda, a big gilded temple in the center of town littered with praying and lounging locals, there is a large British colonial-style building that I took to be City Hall. The street in front of it is blocked off, heavily guarded and punctuated with hundreds of cement-filled barrels and barbed wire blockades. Signs in Burmese and English identify it as a restricted area and warn against photographs.

Naturally I was a bit alarmed that a government building would need to be so heavily guarded. The place is practically an armed fortress just meters from a small playground and a constantly shifting crew of soccer-playing kids in the adjacent street. It wasn't until hours later that I looked more closely at my map. The fortress is not, in fact, the Yangon City Hall, but rather houses the U.S. Embassy. My suspicion is that the heavy duty security around it is not to protect from angry Burmese citizens, but from the Burmese government itself, who deeply fears and hates the U.S..

Copyright 2003 Katy Warren
posted by Katy at 3:53 AM