And now for something totally different from the previous days in Myanmar indeed. A Tamil festival in the streets of Yangon is kind of an instantaneous jump some thousands of kilometers Westward, and shows how intertwined different cultures are in the country…
Back in Yangon now. The party with all the ‘7 Days in Mynmar‘ participants is over, the files delivered… Job done… Or is it? Not really of course. As usual a pandora’s box was opened by starting that new story on the demise of the hill tribes. There is so much more to say, so […]
That is basically what the story I will submit for the ‘7 Days in Myanmar‘ project will be about… The demise of the hill tribes, the ‘normalisation’ of ‘difference’, the difficult to stop cultural leveling of society… The opening up of Myanmar will for sure increase the speed of those changes.
The pieces of my Myanmar puzzle during the ‘7 Days in Myanmar‘ project are coming together. As usual it is a few random encounters which bring the nicest batch of sub-stories: talking to an Akha woman in the streets of Tachileik brings me to a funeral, talking to some streetkids under the bridge crossing the […]
I am back from long walks in the mountain and hooked up on a rickety WiFi in bordertown Tachileik. I have been thinking on how to link two very different places like Ksieng Tong and Tachileik, ethnic minorities and a town bordering Thailand. Having talked with a few Akha, Enn, Palaung and Wa, it seems, […]
Between a press conference, a party for the ‘7 Days in Myanmar‘ project, and with blazing hot temperatures in the streets, I had only a short time to spend at the obvious: Schwedagon Pagoda. Luckily some families were having a ceremony for their child…
It is nearly all right. The fear has eased and comfort when photographing is slowly setting in. People keep politely asking me where I come from. Reminds me of ten years ago in Cambodia. And I now also know about the areas I am supposed to photograph for ‘7 Days in Myanmar‘: the Eastern Shan […]
I have been probing how people react to being photographed here on my first day in Yangon. Seems to be all right… It remains a challenge.