Dark Ruby: A Journey Through Burma

Rating:
Summary: A good read on travels in Burma
Review: This will be a good read for someone interested in Burma and travelling in Burma. The author includes good and well-researched background and history of some of the places and sites. Her account of her interaction with the people she met is particularly fascinating. However, I find some of her stubbornness and naiveness about travelling in Burma a little hard to swallow. For example, the way she argued when she tried to get air tickets, withdraw money using visa etc. Things just don't always work or turn out the way we expect it to be. We just have to take it in our stride. I am also a bit annoyed when the author seemed to long for the more colourful and less developed lifestyle of the people she had observed in her previous visit. People living in these less developed countries also deserve progress and modernisation, even if their government mismanaged the process. They still have a lot to learn about how not to be short-sighted to destroy heritage and culture while modernising, we cannot judge them using the standard and priority we are used to in the developed countries. These people don't deserve to live in a primitive way just to satisfy our quest to see something exotic and un-spoilt.

Rating:
Summary: A good read on travels in Burma
Review: This will be a good read for someone interested in Burma and travelling in Burma. The author includes good and well-researched background and history of some of the places and sites. Her account of her interaction with the people she met is particularly fascinating. However, I find some of her stubbornness and naiveness about travelling in Burma a little hard to swallow. For example, the way she argued when she tried to get air tickets, withdraw money using visa etc. Things just don't always work or turn out the way we expect it to be. We just have to take it in our stride. I am also a bit annoyed when the author seemed to long for the more colourful and less developed lifestyle of the people she had observed in her previous visit. People living in these less developed countries also deserve progress and modernisation, even if their government mismanaged the process. They still have a lot to learn about how not to be short-sighted to destroy heritage and culture while modernising, we cannot judge them using the standard and priority we are used to in the developed countries. These people don't deserve to live in a primitive way just to satisfy our quest to see something exotic and un-spoilt.