this happens again and again for us in myanmar. for almost six years? six years, nearly six years. all the judgments are made by the kangaroo court, the navy, army, and the air force. these three officials sitting all together, they read off, this is your sentence, like that. right. it happens only minutes, like that. what is life like inside prison? nice, nice, very nice. i have a hard time believing that. very nice. we can talk to each other, you know, say something. we use a mirror to look at each other. access to books? no books, no writing things, no paper. no, nothing at all. a mat and a blanket and a plate and a bowl. right. only these are things that we possess. how is the food? the food in prison? soup. rice with pea soup. only one meat meal for a week. that s on thursday. you know that in prison in ancient prison, all the fishes - no body, only the head and the
now, people live here. a half-century as a pariah state has left very few of these buildings in good repair. and there are divergent views on whether to preserve them. for many, a reminder of colonial subjugation. for others, a vestige of a golden time. these days in myanmar, in the streets, on the docks, it s all about moving forward. in an economy ripe to explode if things continue trending in their current direction, the busy hustle and bustle of yangon s port appears even busier today as workers prepare for the oncoming holiday. hey, chef. how are you doing? it figures, doesn t it? yeah, it does. welcome to myanmar. philip lajaunie, owner and proprietor of my old restaurant,
chances are, you haven t been to this place. chances are, this is a place you ve never seen. other than maybe blurry cellphone videos, old black-and-white newsreels from world war ii. chances are, bad things were happening in the footage you saw. myanmar. after 50 years of nightmare, something unexpected is happening here, and it s pretty incredible.
as elsewhere in this part of the world, in many of the buddhist temples here, far older animist, spirit-based beliefs coexist with more recent buddhism. and in myanmar, worship of the nats is wide spread. nats, as i understand it, are more like greek gods, former humans, demigods, spirits, often with very human qualities and failings. dance performances pay homage to the individual nats, performers claiming to actually channel them, bringing about, one hopes, a beneficial spiritual possession. but i m not just here for a nat pue. i have a list, things to eat in myanmar, and this is one of them. chicken curry. and from roadside joints like this nestled among the temple ruins, you re more than likely to catch a very enticing whiff.
like a digestive walk. here we go. this is stop number one of 75. heading north, the scenery opens up. the space between things gets wider, more pastoral, and more beautiful. looking around at my fellow passengers, it could be hard to distinguish between the 135-plus ethnic groups that make up the burmese population. the very name, burma, refers actually to only one of these groups. what they all seem to have in