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Project 3 -- Myanmar
By Paul
Padegimas
Myanmar, or Burma, was an absolutely
incredible place, unlike any that I have ever experienced before. The city of Yangon,
the only city that I visited in Myanmar, had a very
different feel than the other major cities I had experienced earlier on
this voyage around the world. While
everywhere I had visited in
the country
exhibited a rich
vernacular culture, I could find very little evidence of efforts made
to globalize this city. One thing that
shocked me the most was the absolute unavailability of ATMs and vendors
which accepted credit cards. To me, in a
world linked more by finances than anything else, this was unheard of. Given, there were places we visited thus far
that had limited credit card acceptance, the fact that there were no
ATMs anywhere for those who did not carry enough cash on them made it
seem as if we had traveled back in time when we entered Myanmar. Understood that there is an incredible lack of
infrastructure in this country to base credit card and ATM networks on,
it still was shocking to see that there was absolutely no acceptance
aside from in a couple of the fanciest hotels.
Also, while in Myanmar, I realized that,
though not overtly apparent, if one looked a little closer it was not
incredibly difficult to tell that it was not a free society. On the outside, most places seemed like those
in other less developed countries. However,
if one actually talked to the people, it became apparent.
Though people would not hesitate to talk about politics,
they would only discuss them in a way much slanted towards the positive
when referring to the Burmese government, and showed no true support
for the institution of democracy. I
believe that this would be mostly due to fear of the kind of things
that occurred in Stephens' article, “The Heart of Burma.”
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