The government of Burma (Myanmar) has blocked legions of foreign aid workers from entering the country to help with cyclone relief efforts, but a couple of outside travel companies have been able to offer at least some assistance. Most notably, Colorado-based Asia Transpacific Journeys, with dozens of local staff members and three Westerners in the country, has been distributing thousands of water filters around Yangon, the Los Angeles Times reports. Their efforts raise an interesting issue related to the ongoing debate over the ethics of traveling to Burma.

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We can’t let the day pass without noting the tragedy in Burma (Myanmar). According to some reports, as many as 10,000 22,500 100,000 people have died as a result of the cyclone that hit over the weekend. As if the Burmese people haven’t suffered enough already.

Related on World Hum:
* Under the Banyan Tree
* Big Brother in Burma
* Burma’s Ongoing Cycle of Despair

Updated: Wednesday, May 7, 6:20 p.m. ET

Reuters photographer Adrees Latif won the breaking news photography Pulitzer Prize yesterday for his shot of a Japanese videographer killed during anti-government protests in Burma (Myanmar). Today, Reuters has Latif’s account of the how he got the shot. It’s riveting.

Related on World Hum:
* Busking Story Earns Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing
* Dispatch from Burma: Under the Banyan Tree

That would be Naypyidaw, which Robert Reid writes in Perceptive Travel, “is already joining the ranks of intentional cities that must look good on paper, but are just awful to live in.”

Related on World Hum:
* Dispatch: Under the Banyan Tree

That’s the tagline for the latest Rambo movie, and according to Reuters, the people of Yangon are “going crazy” for it.

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A few months back I wrote about Sylvester Stallone’s latest addition to the “Rambo” series. Sly had wrapped up filming on the Thai-Burmese border right around the time that the military junta began cracking down on protesting monks, and he told the media that he wanted his new flick to help expose the cruelty of the ruling generals. “It would be a whitewashing not to show what’s over there,” he said at the time. “I think there is a story that needs to be told.”

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Turns out that jailing all those protesters in Burma (Myanmar) last year may not have been the best way to keep them down, at least in the long term. “There seemed little chance of getting organized until more than 2,000 protesters, arrested and jammed into crowded jail cells, met one another and overcame their distrust,” reports the Los Angeles Times. “Now, most of them are on the streets again, carefully building a network for what they call a new revolution. Their digital tools are e-mail and text messages, which are more powerful than a megaphone, and cellphone cameras that are so common that thousands of people are potential journalists.” It sounds encouraging, but only time will tell, of course.

Related on World Hum:
* Can Your Panties Help Save Burma?
* The State of the Burma Travel Debate

It’s been three months since the military junta in Burma cracked down on protesting monks, and the debate about how travelers should respond still rages. In the January issue of Conde Nast Traveler, Susan Hack highlights the latest arguments about whether to go or not to go.

Related on World Hum:
* Invisible Burma
* Can Your Panties Help Save Burma?

It has in a big way in Yan’an, the prefecture in northwestern China that was the center of the Chinese communist revolution from 1935 to 1948. Mao Zedong and other communist leaders lived in caves and pagodas carved into the hillside, and Chinese communists celebrate it as the birthplace of the revolution. And as China has grown into a world power, its leaders are trying to boost national pride through “red tourism” that celebrates communist touchstones such as Yan’an, according to NPR. Of course, Mao’s pagodas are an obvious choice to muscle up nationalism: Today Chinese visitors from other regions visit Yan’an so they can dress up as revolutionaries and sing the communist ditty “The East is Red” with performers wearing traditional peasant clothes.

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Some activists think so. We noted yesterday the ominous silence that has settled over Burma in the aftermath of the ruling junta’s violent crackdown. But outside the country, protest groups are still trying to keep up the pressure, and they’re getting creative to hold the world’s attention. Last week, Thailand-based activist group Lanna Action for Burma launched the Panty Power Campaign, encouraging women around the world to send their underwear to the nearest Burmese embassy.

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A month after the ruling military junta crushed protesting monks, killing an unknown number of people, an ominous, Orwellian calm has settled over Burma. Tourist arrivals have dropped by up to 90 percent since the military crackdown. “It’s not peace you see here; it’s a forced silence,” a 46-year-old Burmese writer who joined last month’s protests in Rangoon told The New York Times’ Choe Sang-Hun in a troubling report on the current conditions in the country. The writer—who like most people interviewed did not disclose his name out of fear of government reprisal—carried with him a worn copy of his favorite book, George Orwell’s “1984.”

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Lonely Planet founder Tony Wheeler writes in the Guardian that his travel contacts within Burma are reeling from the recent protests and the ensuing crackdown. However, he adds, boycotts and isolation are not the best response to recent events; he continues to be an advocate for travel to the country. 

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