Burma-Bound

We are recovering from another bout of exciting food mishaps (Challenge:  check out the recent food blogpost and see if you can spot the culprit!), but luckily we had taken a couple of days for Christmas in Hua Hin, so there weren't tons of interviews to run around and immerse ourselves in.  Judy has been a constant source of insight into the NGO and USAID side of policy on the Burma/Thailand border, so we have still learned quite a lot.  Mostly, it's that when discussing policy in Burma, take everything with a grain of salt, because everybody has a different opinion about what is happening now and what' s coming next.

However, tomorrow we will see for ourselves!  We will arrive around 5 in the afternoon and check into our hotel.  Then, Than invited us to a party at Pansodan Art Gallery in Yangon.  Luckily for us, this happens every Tuesday night, so we're looking forward to meeting some new people there right off the bat!

In fact, we are moving into the part of our trip that is mostly devoted to talking to artists rather than policy makers, but (according to Judy, and most of the rest of the world) politics is going to be on everyone's minds in a country with so much upheaval.  In addition to this art gallery, we hope to meet up with the people of the Beyond Pressure performance festival in Yangon and hopefully also the infamous Moustache Brothers in Mandalay.  Plus a couple of other friends of friends that we hope to track down once we're over there.

Internet might be sketchy while we are in Burma, so there may be a bunch of retrospective blogs after we're back in Thailand, but you never know - we might find an internet cafe along the way, so stay tuned!

Until then, Happy Holidays from Hua Hin!

Vivian

Practice-as-Research!