Myanmar is certainly a mysterious country. One that is also intriguing. Located about 50 kilometres southeast of Bagan is an extinct volcano called Mount Popa. The mountain itself can be seen from a long distance away, but the volcano isn’t the reason many people visit, it is a plug from the volcano which attracts thousands of pilgrims each year. This plug rises to...
When I first visited the Burmese city of Yangon ten years ago it was far from sleepy. Soon after arrival I found myself tucking into a spicy salad of fermented tea leaves, or laphet, at 4am in the morning in a bustling night market. Returning recently there has been simultaneously great change and yet it looks very similar. Great hopes for democracy may have been...
Under its former name, which was spelt as Pagan, you would imagine that the citizens were a bunch of heathens with little or no religion, but nothing could be further from the truth from those who lived in Bagan during its heyday from the 9th to 13th centuries. In those days, Bagan was the biggest city in the country we now know as Myanmar, or Burma. In fact it...