This week’s travel dream: In a Burma state of mind

Burma—Myanmar, officially—is “among the world’s most beguiling destinations,” said Donovan Webster in National Geographic Traveler. Though its people have struggled for liberation from a military dictatorship, the recent emancipation of Aung San Suu Kyi—the nation’s “gentle martyr and embodiment of hope for a democratic government”—is a sign of progress. For regular visitors like myself, it also offers fresh encouragement to once again “support the populace with my tourist dollars.” Burma is a “magical place” that “inhabits your dreams” long after you depart.

Every one of my visits begins in Yangon, formerly Rangoon, the country’s largest city. Though it’s home to more than 4 million people, Yangon “retains a peaceful sway unlike any other Asian metropolis.” From the moment I arrive, “I feel myself slowing down.” I love strolling along the quiet, leafy colonial-era streets of this “anti-Bangkok.” One day, I made my way to the gleaming Shwedagon pagoda on Singuttara Hill, above the city center. Thought to be 2,500 years old, Schwedagon is an elaborate complex that encircles the “largest gilded zedi, or Buddhist mounded shrine, on earth.” I left my shoes at the entrance and, upon reaching the main platform, could feel the “sun-warmed marble” against my soles as I gazed up at the gigantic spire through a forest of smaller golden spires. I heard “the cries of birds and the gonging of a bell,” but not a single human voice.

I once took an 80-mile trip down the Irrawaddy River from Mandalay—Burma’s ancient imperial capitol—to the “zedi-studded, red-clay plain called Pagan (or Bagan).” My mode of transit was a local vessel, which afforded a “leisurely, though rustic, 24-hour float down the river” that gives the nation its lifeblood. I boarded the boat before dawn, finding a seat among farmers, monks, and burlap sacks of rice and cotton, and was offered tea and a pork bun. As we pulled away, the sun slowly began to rise, its light “reflecting off the Irrawaddy’s dark surface” as we drifted past “Crayola-green shorelines” and “misty hills” dotted with zedis. “For once, I thought, life was moving at a pace where everything could be observed.”

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