{"id":93096,"date":"2015-12-30T09:00:41","date_gmt":"2015-12-30T14:00:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=93096"},"modified":"2015-12-21T12:27:45","modified_gmt":"2015-12-21T17:27:45","slug":"confoundingly-picturesque-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/12\/30\/confoundingly-picturesque-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Confoundingly Picturesque"},"content":{"rendered":"

We\u2019re away until January 4, but we\u2019re re-posting some of our favorite pieces from 2015. Please enjoy, and have a happy New Year!<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

A Portuguese engraving of Mrauk U, 1676.<\/p><\/div>\n

On the obsolescence of guidebooks; traveling in Myanmar.<\/em><\/p>\n

Several years ago in New York, I told Wim Wenders how much I\u2019d liked his film about musicians in Lisbon; he grabbed me by the lapels. \u201cYou should go,\u201d he said, \u201cbefore it\u2019s too late.\u201d I didn\u2019t go then. A few years later I did, and I couldn\u2019t tell whether it was too late. Probably it was\u2014that seems to almost always be the case.<\/p>\n

In a similar mind, I went to Myanmar. \u201cIt\u2019s already too late\u201d is the refrain one hears again and again about Myanmar, but better late than never. Flights from Bangkok to Yangon are ridiculously cheap, but the city that was Rangoon has a hotel shortage, and beds there are not. Even the taxi from the airport reveals a city in the throes of sudden, extreme development: Vaguely worded business parks have sprouted up everywhere and billboards promise luxurious condos. Hotel lobbies have fliers from real estate developers; breakfast is a sea of laptops, people trying to get in on the ground floor of a newly opened country.<\/p>\n

In the hands of Westerners everywhere in Myanmar, one notices a book\u2014Lonely Planet\u2019s Myanmar (Burma)<\/em>, published in July of last year, the most recent travel guide to the country. Leave the capital and its prevalence is even more striking. Elsewhere, the travel guide is a vanishing species, done in first by the Internet and then by smartphones. In most countries in the region, a ten-dollar\u00a0SIM<\/small> card will get you Google Maps, Wikipedia, TripAdvisor, Agoda; even without a SIM<\/small>, wireless isn\u2019t hard to find. Myanmar, for the moment, is different. You can buy a SIM<\/small> in Yangon, but we left for Sittwe the day after the electrification of Rakhine State was celebrated: asking for a working cellular network there was too much too soon. Lonely Planet would have to suffice. Read More >><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We\u2019re away until January 4, but we\u2019re re-posting some of our favorite pieces from 2015. Please enjoy, and have a happy New Year! On the obsolescence of guidebooks; traveling in Myanmar. 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