Myanmar | Travel Photography Flashback

PersonalTravel

Jun 10

It's hard to believe it's been a little over 4 years since I went to this beautiful country and met some of its incredible people. I thought today I'd share some of my Myanmar photos.

At the time I went, the country was just opening up to tourists coming in, Aung San Suu Kyi had just been released from her long house arrest, and the corrupt government had "moved the capitol" hours away from everything into the jungle.

While I was there, I went to an event on New Years Eve that was expressly tailored to tourists, including a table that said "Get Your Burmese Name Here." I thought this was kind of silly, but it was in the line I was in, so I walked up and the man handed me a card that said "Your Burmese name is Lin-Lin." It's a phrase that means Beautiful or Bright Light. (I did get it checked several times before I got it tattooed on my shoulder two years later)

Before he handed me that card I was frustrated because I didn't know the language and had almost no way to talk to any of the people I encountered, and felt like I was on a trajectory to take what I wanted in the way of pictures and not treat the people or their culture or country in accordance with their value.

After he handed me that card and I realized what a beautiful phrase it was, I started writing it on my arm, on my camera strap, on any piece of paper I could find, and our tour guide Willie took note and began to call me Lin-Lin. We struck up a friendship which led to him inviting me to sit with him and the bus drivers or the monks when we would stop, and actually gave me a connection with people to learn and start to appreciate.

A few months ago I was going through my photo archives and decided to pull up pictures from two of the days in Myanmar and re-edit them.

The first set here is from the Shwedagon Pagoda in Yangon. We spent several days coming back to it and wandering the space.

The second set is from Inle Lake in the north. We took a 6 hour bus trip to get up in the mountains to it. It's an incredible community of fishermen, houses built on stilts in the lake, entire hydroponic gardens on rafts of water hyacinth and a temple that floats on the lake with trained cats that jump through hoops.