Best places to take photo in Myanmar?

<p>I am going to spend some times in Myanmar. Can anyone advise me the best places to take photos in Myanmar?<br />------------------<br>

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<p>you may not have that much choice in your destinations given travel restrictions inside Myanmar. Among the typical tourist itineraries, Bagan is absolutely amazing with its hundreds of temples and wll give you loads of photo ops. Inle Lake (famous for one legged rowers) and Mandalay are also very good. The main temple in Rangoon is very impressive. I found that most people are very friendly and don't mind having their picture taken, and most of my prized shots are portraits. Good luck and try to support local (vs state-run) entreprises.<br /> JP</p><div></div>

<p> Bagan is of course #1. By far the best pictures are to be taken at sunset while standing on the terrace of one of the many pagodas, and shoting towards the river and the setting sun across the plain scattered with dozen and dozen of other pagodas. Note #1: being near the equator, the sun will set very fast, and you will have only a few minutes available. You should be already in place, with all your equipment handy, when the sun starts going down towards the horizon. And, there could be no question of shooting from two different locations in the same afternoon. This would require a stay by two or more days. Note #2: you would wish to select a pagoda not too high nor too low, and neither too close nor too far from the river. Here again, this choice has to be made well in advance. I would recommend hiring a local guide (it is advisable anyway) who will understand your problem and will help you.<br>

Lake Ile is also quite pictoresque. In addition to the one-leg rowing fishermen (who unfortunately have since learned to pose for the turist boats in exchange for cigarettes) you wouldn't want to miss the floating village and the temple of the jumping cats (the buddish monks there have teached cats to jump across a ring, like tigers in a circus). Very near to Lake Ile there is the famous temple for monk boys.<br>

The main temple in Rangoon and Mandalay and its surroundings have already been mentioned. You should be aware, however, that many of what from a distance look like old building in Mandalay are actually dubious reconstructions made after independence in the 1950s (with concrete in place of wood) because the original city was burned to the ground by the British.<br>

Another place you wouldn't want to miss is the pilgrimage centre at the Hanging Rock, where a very large boulder stands in exceedingly precarious equilibrium over a precipice (being supposedly held in place by a single hair of Lord Buddha). Generation of pilgrims have since completely covered the rock with many layers over of gold foil, and particularly at night it is a stunning sight. It is a long trip to go there, but worth it.<br>

And, of course, the people. They have been described as "the gentlest oppressed people on Earth", and this is indeed true. If you want to take a bath into the Burmese, go to Bagan by boat rather than by air, and take one of the large vessels used by the locals rather than the more luxurious and faster ones reserved for tourists. Your boat will do many stops underway, and women will come onboard at eacch stop to sell their wares (fruits, embroided silk, etc.) before getting down at the next stop. Absolutely fascinating. <br>

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<p>I don't know if the situation has improved at Inle Lake. This article is from June, 2010.</p>

<p>Burmese filmmaker Min Htin Ko Ko Gyi planned to shoot a documentary about the beauty of Inle Lake, but after seeing the environmental damage the once-pristine lake has incurred in recent years, he decided to use his film to educate the public about the degradation by chemical fertilizers and pesticides of one of his country's natural wonders.<br>

Inle Lake, Burma's second largest stretch of inland water, is located in Taunggyi township, capital of Shan State. Encircled by mountains, green with trees and painted with flowers, the lake and its surroundings provide as beautiful a setting as you will find in Burma.</p>

 

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<td ><img src="http://www.irrawaddy.org/articlefiles/22199-7.%20HL-innlay-current.gif" alt="" /></td>

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<td >The water level recently at Inle Lake. (Source: Weekly Eleven Journal)</td>

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Inle Lake is most famous for its floating houses and gardens and its local fisherman, who stand in their wooden boats, wrap one leg around an oar, and row by swinging their leg wide and dragging the oar through the water.

<p>But as Min Htin Ko Ko Gyi's documentary demonstrates, the livelihood of these fisherman is now in jeopardy, partly as a result of the farming practices used in the floating gardens and partly as a result of drought and deforestation in Shan State.<br>

The 30-minute documentary, titled “Floating Tomatoes,” illustrates the impact on the lake of chemical fertilizers and pesticides used by farmers growing vegetables in the floating gardens.<br>

The film, which includes interviews with Inle Lake tomato farmers who have experienced health problems from the use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides, took Min Htin Ko Ko Gyi one year to research and shoot and is the first environmental film about Inle Lake. It was shown in Rangoon on June 5 at a photo exhibition held by Burmese environmentalists, and will continue to show on state-run television station MRTV-4.<br>

Over 100,000 people earn their livelihood by growing tomatoes in Inle Lake's floating gardens. To produce a higher yield of tomatoes, they use chemical fertilizers and pesticides, and most are unaware of the negative effect these chemicals have on their health and the negative environmental impact they have on the lake. As a result, the water from the lake can now only be used for cleaning and bathing—the people use pipe water for drinking and cooking.<br>

“The people use the chemical fertilizers and pesticides more than what they need. They don't have any protection for their health when they use it. They spray a lot of pesticides on their tomato gardens and those pesticides drop into the water directly. Then, I see the people use the water again,” Min Htin Ko Ko Gyi told The Irrawaddy.<br>

The chemicals have also greatly reduced the fish population in the lake. This creates a vicious circle, because when people can't fish for a living, they turn to tomato farming, resulting in even more chemicals being dumped into the lake.<br>

And the tomatoes from Inle Lake are exported to Mandalay and Rangoon, so the use of chemicals and pesticides is “not only dangerous for the people who live in Inle Lake, but also dangerous for the customers who eat tomatoes in Burma,” Min Htin Ko Ko Gyi said.<br>

“The documentary is good,” said U Ohn, a Rangoon environmentalist who delivered an introduction in the film, “but there is no answer how to help the people shown in the documentary. We can't force the people to stop growing tomatoes because they have no other business. Instead of using fertilizer, we need to give them education about how to grow organic.” <br>

The use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides are not the only causes of Inle Lake's environmental decline. Both drought and deforestation in Shan State—which increases the impact of drought by increasing the amount of silt in the lake—have also played a large role. Burmese environmentalists have found that the climate and biodiversity in the lake have changed to the point that the thousands of people who live in the floating houses and work the floating gardens may lose their way of life.<br>

“People in Shan State don't know how to maintain the forest,” U Ohn said. “There is much logging in Shan State and it has become deforested. This impacts the people who live on Inle Lake. The water level is getting low and the lake is threatened to be extinct in the future.</p>

 

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<p>I'm not an expert in environmental pollution, and I wouldn't certainly dare assuming I could challenge the statements by someone, who apparently has been researching on a specific problem for more than a year. But even so:<br />- Knowing what I know about the Myanmar government, EVERYTHING that manages being aired on State TV needs to be regarded with considerable suspicion, and this includes weather forecasts;<br />- Lake Inle is has an average depth of no more than 5m (16ft) , ans it has no immissary but an emissary. Thus, the dry (pre-monsoon) season will necessarily produce photos like the one shown, which does not means that the lake is "dying";<br />- The relationship between the central authorities and the Shan minority are, to say it simply, rather tense. The military regime is more than up to inventing some accusation to criminalise its opponents.<br />Which does not mean that one should not be worried about the admittedly very fragile ecosystem at Lake Inle going kaputt. But at least the last time I was there, the problem was not chemicals, but rather the risk of eutrophy due to the fact that the the people living there both use the lake as a sewer, and spread their own feces as fertilizers (cost far less than chemicals, and are aplenty). Fishes have no problem with that, they just taste funny.</p>