Some General Observations of Myanmar/Burma

Pedestrians - NOBODY stops for pedestrians, not even on pedestrian crossings.

Traffic merges fairly effortlessly but with copious amount of tooting. It's manic, it seems it's mayhem, but it's "organised" somehow.

Manual labour - a lot of it seems to be done by women, or at least that's our observation. Construction workers have absolutely no work safe practices in place: welding is done without protective glasses; airport workers on the tarmac don't wear protective earphones; building workers, high up on scaffolding, don't wear a harness - and all of them whilst wearing thongs!

Laying the ground base for roads is all done by hand and predominantly it's the women who carry the rocks from where they've been dumped by a truck, balanced on their heads to where they are placed ready to be used. It's heavy work and done by children as young as 11. 

Laying the road base.

A young (13 year old) construction worker

Hospitals are so very, very, very basic. They make the facilities Nurse Ratchett worked in look like state of the art 2050!  But, I am so grateful for the work of the dedicated doctors in that public hospital in Nuaungshwe. 

Construction and development in Burma/Myanmar has been suppressed for many years and now its doors have opened up to the outside world, so have the floodgates on large and ugly developments. There are 20 very "influential" families in Yangon linked to the military government. These construction jobs are taken on by these families and they and the government officials get to share the monetary rewards. As a consequence, there is very small number of people who are extremely rich, with the majority extremely poor. 

It's all very, very dirty! -- rubbish is everywhere and very, very few people seem to care. 

Food & drink are very cheap!  --  just make sure the food is hot and only drink bottled water & bottled beer.  We met a couple in Yangon, Mercedes and Colin; Mercedes previously worked for the UN and said beer isn't good to drink in 3rd world countries because it's made with the local water and she recommends only Coca Cola is drunk! I'm not sure though, which is the lesser of the two evils!

(Why won't BlogSpot.com co-operate and present the text in the same font/format?! Grrrrrr!)

There is a strong need for animal rights workers to put in an appearance here. Three "white elephants" are shackled by two feet, one front one rear foot, and rock aimlessly back and forth for hours on end. Our guide tried to assure us they are taken for long walks morning and night, "on the gardens", but I wasn't assured at all.