Thursday, March 22, 2012

Aung San Rally








These are the pictures of us taken in Mandalay at the political rally for Aung San's party. She's called 'the Lady' by Burmese people. We had only been in the country a few days and had visions of being kicked out as there were tv cameras there filming it all and we were the only foreigners there.
It was explained to us many times over the course of our travels in the country that the votes for her party come from urban areas because the rural people don't understand voting and are manipulated and intimidated by the ruling party. There has been a lot of interesting media coverage in the rest of Asia about what's going on in the country and what it may mean.
I even saw a t-shirt in Yangon with Aung San and Hilary Clinton together on it. I wasn't a big fan of her going there because I was worried that she would push too hard and the door might slam shut again on the country and leave Burmese worse off than ever but when I asked people I met how they felt about it they all felt more optimistic about the future because of her visit.

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