Visit Myanmar—That’s an Order

Travel Stories: Travel to Myanmar has slowed to a trickle. But a decade ago, with great fanfare, the government launched a new tourism campaign. Stephen Brookes, then Rangoon bureau chief for Asia Times, remembers its bizarre launch ceremony.

09.09.08 | 12:58 PM ET

Myanmar troopsPhoto by Stephen Brookes

The 7-foot dolls had taken their papier-mâché heads off and were milling around behind the stadium, smoking cigarettes and chatting up the dancing girls from the Ministry of Culture.

You could hardly blame them—the enormous heads were hot and airless, and the guys inside had to peer out from two little eyeholes cut into the mouth. Besides, the dancing girls were cute and had jasmine flowers in their hair, and they weren’t due in the stadium for another 15 minutes, to do their part—along with more than 5,000 other costumed performers—for a massive ceremony to usher in “Visit Myanmar Year.”

It was November 18, 1996, and at 5:30 that morning, Myanmar’s military junta had rounded up the few foreign journalists in town and bussed us to a stadium just outside Rangoon, for what they promised would be the media event of the year. Now, two hours later, most of us had managed to sneak out of our assigned seats and were wandering around on the field, trying to figure out what was going on. I stumbled into a makeshift staging area, where I found the gigantic papier-mâché dolls. One of them offered me a Marlboro.

“What are you, exactly?” I asked him. His head looked ridiculously tiny, poking out of the huge wire-and-cardboard body that hung on his shoulders with a pair of straps. His little white-gloved hands dangled comically at the end of enormous arms, and his costume was a lurid cascade of gold ruffles. On the ground beside him sat his huge head. It was difficult to look at him for very long.

“We’re pageboys,” he told me, as a uniformed marching band filed past. “Back in the time of kings, you know, pageboys would serve the king. Carry messages. Serve tea.”

The dancing girls had danced away to a safe distance, but a crowd of small boys—also dressed up as pageboys but normal-sized—had moved in to see what was going on. There were hundreds of them, all dressed in identical crimson-and-gold costumes, all wearing black polyester wigs tied in two pigtails, all made up disturbingly in bright red lipstick, pink eye shadow and yellow face powder. They were difficult to look at, too.

A nervous-looking woman noticed me, then barked something at the boys and began clapping. The boys began to leap rhythmically up and down, pointing with their index fingers in various directions and grinning like miniature maniacs.

“That’s the pageboy dance,” explained the big doll. “The pageboys would walk ahead of the king and tell people where to go. ‘Go this way! Go that way!’” He stuck his fingers in the air and wagged them like the boys were doing, to show me what he meant. The woman barked again, and the pageboys stopped jumping.

“Impressive,” I said. “How many of them are there?” He looked around at the sea of faces that surrounded us and took a drag on his cigarette.

“About five hundred,” he said, exhaling a long stream of smoke.

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Stephen Brookes is a journalist based in Washington, D.C., and a classical music critic for The Washington Post. His writing has appeared in Newsweek, Asia Times, Insight, The Far Eastern Economic Review and Architectural Digest.


4 Comments for Visit Myanmar—That’s an Order

Brandon 09.09.08 | 9:22 PM ET

Brilliant! I got a chance to visit Myanmar as a student a few years… Powerful essay capture the contrived nature of Junta trying to make whatever it can a spectacle as a facade from the grim reality of day-to-day life there.

I can’t wait to go back.

Nyi Nyi 09.15.08 | 7:25 AM ET

Thanks for sharing this article of Stephen who has been here more than a decade ago. 12 years ago, it might have been true. And it might have been a game plan between the political party and the Junta itself to show how gigantic they are. Meanwhile, Daw Suu Kyi told “don’t visit!”. To put exact way,

“Tourism to Burma is helping to prolong the life of one of the most brutal and destructive regimes in the world,” she told reporters once. “Visiting now is tantamount to condoning the regime.”  (Ref: BBC News | Asia-Pacific 1996)

But we have to rethink that since then she has been under house arrest along without press release. So that must also be outdated, happened in 12 years ago.

It was a kind of show between them, the Writer could express it pretty well. But I think it is a bleeding humble request now by the people, for the people. So it’s not an order, it’s a request.

Debra 09.19.08 | 5:12 PM ET

I would love to visit Burma but the bad news coming out from the country is creating a concern for me. I hope all of you are well and bringing the peace back so we can travel to Burma.

Torah 10.04.08 | 4:09 PM ET

I heard that Burma (or Myanmar) is an extremely beautiful place. If I had the time and the money to go there, I for sure would. That, and Italy, is on my “to go” list.

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