My oh Myanmar

Flight to Myanmar

`We flew with UBA, United Burma Airlines. This makes it seem like a conscious decision, as if we had plenty of choice, as if we’d thoroughly researched the world’s leading airlines for reliability and customer service and had finally decided that UBA beat ‘em all.

Myanmar or Burma travel visa

All the lonely people

Not so. There was no research. It wasn’t necessary. There were no other airlines competing for our business. Nobody was stampeding to get to Burma. Therefore, none of the major airlines were flying there.
Only UBA was flying there. Only UBA thought that Burma was worth visiting. If the regime is isolated from the rest of the world, so is its – the regime’s – airline. It’s as lonely and neglected as the regime.
What must it be like for the pilots, the cabin staff? Do they have their own facilities at Bangkok airport, kind of isolated from the other facilities? Or do they mix with the other pilots and cabin staff?
My guess is that they mix with them, that they detach themselves from politics, that there’s a kind of international comradeship between airline crew that politics can’t destroy.
I said that nobody was stampeding to get to Burma? I meant it. We were the only passengers on that plane. Out of the entire world’s population, at that particular moment, only three hippy backpackers had the slightest interest in Burma.

Spacious accommodation

Can you imagine what it’s like to sit on an airline seat and have a clear and uninterrupted view of a deserted airliner? Yeah I know, millions of people – frustrated airline passengers – would just love to have a clear and uninterrupted view of a deserted airliner. Ok, have to think about that.

Please please me

To be truthful, we weren’t all that interested in Burma either. Looking back on it now, I think the main reason we were going there was because we wanted to know what it feels like to be in a country which is ruled by a military junta.
I don’t think we were that interested in the Burmese people, in how they lived, in how they felt about being ruled by a military junta. We wanted to know how we would feel to be ruled by a miitary junta.
It was the hippy hedonistic thing, the totally selfish urge to experience.