Burma
Burma – or Myanmar– is the ‘it’ destination of the moment, having featured in almost every recent travel magazine's ‘where to go’ list.. It’s a far cry from a few years ago when the travel media was debating whether it was ethical to go, human rights groups were advising travellers not to, and publishers were slammed for releasing books on Burma.
A lot has changed in a couple of years. This Southeast Asian country lying on the Andaman Sea and Bay of Bengal, with Thailand and Laos on its eastern border, China to its north, and India and Bangladesh to its west, has gone from being a military junta isolated from the world – following a 1962 military coup d'etat which ousted the democratically elected government – to a nation pursuing democracy that opened up following the 2010 elections and the November release that year of pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who’d been under house arrest for almost 15 years. After Aung San Suu Kyi encouraged tourists to visit, the international community lifted informal travel boycotts that had been keeping travellers away.