Your pictures are fantastic.

I did a 11 days self-guided trek in Burma in 1996. It was definitely one of the best trips of my life.

There was hardly any individual tourists at the time, mostly tour groups. The country was still pretty much closed to tourism.

I mostly hitch-hiked all over the place using all sorts of transport from ramshackled busses to sitting on rice sacks on old trucks on mountain roads. I also used a couple of flights.

I thought the Shwedagon was a real life Disneyland. Pagan was awesome. No balloon rides. I had to climb the temples for views from higher up and I used local horse and carriage for transport.

Mandalay was wonderful. Inle was magic.

My most favourite was visiting some of the mountain tribes and staying in Burmese hotels.

I had exchanged all my money on the black market before I had left Rangoon in the guest house where I was staying - getting super rates. I had kept One Dollar bills to use here and there.

My longest wait was in a train station. The trains took forever going across country but it was interesting meeting all the Burmese.

I made a self-made book out of that trip with prints from all the 35mm slides I had taken, maps and diagrams and watercolours of the temples in Pagan.

This was one of my most interesting trips ever.

I have a question:
Burma/Myanmar must be fairly Westernized in 2012/2013.

Did you find it more Westernized than Bhutan? Did you see a lot of tourists in all the places you went? Large cities, towns and villages?

Has Burma got more and more chain hotels or is it still possible to stay in local guest houses?

That sophisticated digital equipment did not exist back in 1996. There was very little Internet also and no mobile phones as we know them now.

Thank you again for posting your wonderful pictures!



oh... and your butterflies are really beautiful!