About Burma ...
 | | Golden Boulder at Kyaitiyo |
Myanmar, or Burma as it is still more familiarly known in the West, is a country where magnificent and ancient Buddhist temples gaze out serenely over a nation restless for change. Myanmar has plenty of wonders of the eye sinuous, life-giving rivers, lush mountain forests, and intricately-drawn cities--but it can also trouble the soul. For the last 30 years, its people have been ruled by a notoriously repressive military government.
 | | | | On the road to Mount Popa | | | Travel to Myanmar is as a result a rather vexed moral question, as a part of tourist revenue falls into the government's coffers. Against this coldly financial argument, however, is the notion that interaction with Myanmar's people and culture helps to encourage change. Tourism can give work to people such as porters, drivers, guides, hotel employees who would be jobless otherwise. Both perspectives have their defenders. I leave the decision to you. (read article of the BBC news : Should tourists go to Burma?)
| | |  | | | | Gold Beating near Mahamuni Temple in Mandalay
| Location, Geography, Climate
Myanmar's coastline defines the eastern shore of the Bay of Bengal, running from the Bangladesh border in the northwest down to the Malay Peninsula and Thai territory in the southeast. Southern Myanmar consists largely of the western slopes of the Bilauktaung Range, which constitutes the northern base of the Malay Peninsula. Northern Myanmar, which comprises the great bulk of the country's area, consists largely of the broad river valley of the Irrawaddy. Originating high up in the very eastern extremity of the Himalayas, the Irrawaddy rushes down through great mountain gorges in northern Myanmar before spreading out into one of the largest river deltas in Asia. Both of Myanmar's principal cities--Rangoon and Mandalay--are situated along the Irrawaddy, and the 1,000 mi (1,600 km) river is navigable for almost two thirds of its length. The Irrawaddy valley is surrounded by a great horseshoe of mountain ranges, which rise in the east to the highlands of the Shan Plateau.
The vast majority of Myanmar's people live in the lowland regions of this river valley, in the Irrawaddy basin.
This fertile expanse, which sits within the tropical monsoon belt, is one of the world's great rice-growing regions. Myanmar's population includes dozens of different racial and ethnic groups, including the Mon, Burmans, Kachins, Chins, Shans, Rakhine, and Karens, each of which have historically dominated a particular area of the country. Although Burmese is the major and official language, more than a hundred local and regional dialects are spoken throughout Myanmar. | 
