The Travel Independently Blog

As a child, I remember seeing a photo of the temples of Bagan at sunrise, peach-colored mist rising among the towers… I knew I had to see the place with my own eyes. It took many twists and turns of fate and probably 5 decades for me to finally get to Bagan.

A number of months ago, I wrote about places that are as wonderful as we thought they would be or are disappointing to us – Larger Than Life or Smaller Than My Vision. I think that places we have dreamed of for years are especially in danger of disappointing.

But Bagan was no disappointment. That first morning, we took a horse cart to watch the sunrise over the plains of Bagan. Standing atop a temple, I looked out over the seemingly endless array of temples in the rosy mist. It was an echo of the photo I’d seen as a child. As we left that temple in the horse cart, over the dusty lanes, I felt I was breathing in the atmosphere of that photo. I realized that just that experience was enough – it fulfilled the dream. Of course, we spent the next three days visiting dozens of temples and loved every minute of it, but the experience of simply being there is what stays with me most.

Technorati Tags: Bagan, Burma, Myanmar, pagan, SE Asia Travel

I gain so much from my travels. And I’m always grateful for how open people are in sharing their culture and experiences. While I can pay people for their services and tip generously or offer small gifts, it never seems like enough to me.

So before I go or when I return from a trip, I always look for a local charity or an international charity that has a project in the area.

Typically, this is an easy task. One of my favorite international charities is Heifer International. In addition to their gifts like a flock of chickens or a goat or a swarm of bees that can help people become more self-sufficient, they also have larger projects. You can choose a project to support. So last year, after our return from Kathmandu, we chose a project in Nepal to support.

I have often given to Doctors without Borders and Mercy Corps. They offer medical care in areas that otherwise have no care available as well as intervening in cases of natural disasters.

A favorite local charity of mine is the Ponheary Ly Foundation (PLF). It’s a charity started by a woman I know from the Fodors board to support education for Cambodian children. It buys school supplies and uniforms for children, augments the salaries of teachers, purchases bicycles so children can attend high school, even brings in a doctor to treat sick children.

Trying to find a charity after our trip to Burma was not as easy. As you may know, Burma has long blocked international charities from coming into the country. Indeed, in the aftermath of hurricane Nargis, they would not allow ships or planes to land carrying food, medicine and aid workers. We did eventually discover that Heifer has a project (Myanmar Agriculture and Livestock Development Project) based in Thailand that reaches into Burma to supply animals and economic development assistance to hill tribe people in Burma. While some projects are set up so you can find them directly, this one was not.

We met a woman in Bagan who had been sponsoring a child near Mandalay through Save the Children for ten years. She had traveled to Burma specifically to meet this child, a very moving experience. We also saw a building in a village on southern Inle Lake that said Save the Children on the sign, so this charity has managed to work inside this country that has traditionally been rejecting of outside help. The picture to the left is of a Save the Children building in Sankar Village, Myanmar.

Some people prefer to takes gifts of school supplies to local schools or medicine to local clinics. These are all ways to give back to people who have so generously shared their lives with us.

Technorati Tags: doctors without borders, Heifer International, International Charities, Mercy Corps, Ponheary Li Foundation, save the children

You can’t get there from here or trying to travel independently in a place that doesn’t want you to be independent.

It’s been a while since my last post here. I have to admit that I got caught up in planning my next trip to my favorite part of the world, SE Asia. Finally, I decided to visit Burma. I won’t go into all of my machinations about whether or not to go, as that debate spanned some twenty years, but I do want to tell you about my experience booking this trip.

When Burma first opened to tourism over two decades ago, they allowed only group tours to enter. At first there was a strict limit of 7 days in the country. As time went on, the rules loosened gradually, but even today by far the majority of travelers to Burma go as part of a tour group. If you aren’t going as part of a tour group, they would prefer that you have a travel agency just book your itinerary for you.

I wanted to travel according to my own plan so I really had to work to get the travel arrangements I wanted. I usually book all of my own flights and all of my own hotels over the internet. For Burma, this was a real challenge. Because most email is blocked in Burma, emails to hotels may never be received. E-mailing is often an exercise in frustration. I was able to book one hotel directly via e-mail; another I found a Thai booking site where I could reserve and pay by credit card in advance – a great advantage in a country where credit cards are basically unusable. And my third hotel I was able to book via a phone call to The Leading Hotels of the World.

Air tickets were harder. There is no way to book intra-Burma flights online. Indeed, it was impossible to find a current timetable, let alone one for a month or two away. Eventually, I found a posting of what flights flew last week. I have a travel agent in Bangkok I’ve used for booking intra-Asia flight when needed. I wrote to him, and after several weeks of trying, he told me he was unable to book my flights. At that point, I emailed a travel agent in Yangon. They were able to tell me the times of the flights and book them.

And no one told me that there are no non-stop flights among all of the major cities. Of our three internal flights, two had stops on the way. And there are few choices about when to fly. It is not uncommon to have only one flight a day between two of the four major destinations in Burma. So our time in each place was a little different than we had originally planned.

Still, we did eventually get all of our hotels and flights and we had a wonderful time.

But I learned that a country that would prefer that you not travel independently can make it difficult for even the most stubborn independent traveler!

Technorati Tags: Bagan, Burma, Inle Lake, Mandalay, Myanmar, Rangoon, Yangon