Posts Tagged ‘burma’

2 Years ago Cyclone Nargis devastated southern Burma killing an estimated 140 000 people and displacing millions from there homes. The subsequent  behaviour of the ruling military junta was nothing but disgraceful, at the time there was real talk about helping free the Burmese from their harshly restricted lives, there was even talk of military intervention against the rulers but nothing came of it, their cause has been all but forgotten. By coincidence I was in Burma at the time of the cyclone. Fortunately I was in the North when the

Ok so here we go on day 2 of the official Tom Bourdon’s remember Burma week. After flying in to Rangoon I settled into a nice hotel and spent the next 2 days shooting, planning, meeting the locals and drinking plenty of tea. I headed north on a private bus. Thus avoiding the much more comfortable faster and cheaper  train which is owned by the government. I wanted to spend as much of my budget with local people and private

And finally we reach the last day of the remember Burma week, I promise next week I’ll give you something a little more exciting to read. So I headed back to Rangoon, unsure what I might find, I planned to settle in to the same hotel and then go out shooting as much as I could, what I found was that almost every tree and lamp post had been uprooted leaving pavements leaving them looking like they were made of

Ok so here we go on day 4. When I arrived in Bagan I found out that there had been a ‘big storm’ in Rangoon and it had knocked out all the telephone and Internet connections, thinking the phone lines would be back soon a few days later still no telephone or Internet connections and people started talking about a ‘really big storm’ and someone mentioned that they thought 3 people had died when a boat sank. I started to

While I was in the Northern city of Mandalay I had a few trips to smaller towns the first of which was Mingun who’s main attraction is the ruined Mingun Pahtodawgyi, the remains of an unfinished stupa (a place for Buddhist worship). The stupa was never completed and was massively damaged by an earthquake in 1838. What remains is incredibly impressive and is currently the worlds largest pile of bricks (what ever thats worth). The second town I visited was

6 months ago today I arrived in the Rangoon the capital of Burma to shoot the local people going about their daily lives, I knew the country was relatively politically unstable but I could not be prepared for what was to happen just 2 weeks later. For those of you who don’t remember (and sadly I believe there are many who don’t) I’m talking about the horrific cyclone Nargis that hit Burma on 3rd May 2008, leaving an estimated 140,000