The general concept has not much changed: We try to focus on empowering the Burmese population and civil society as equal partners. We thus hope to avoid the common pitfall when NGOs and aid providers insufficiently involve the main target group. Instead, we seek to encourage a momentum of sustainability that comes from those who are genuinely interested.

One of our main tools is a customized system based on the software Ushahidi where individuals and civil society groups can report concrete issues that are caused by inbound tourism. You will find the reports on (ir)responsible tourism in Burma/Myanmar at my.ecoburma.com. A short introduction and instructions on how to submit reports are available in Burmese and can be downloaded as PDF.

Of course, also travelers are invited to submit reports. Just move over to my.ecoburma.com and check out the help page.

We hope that with a growing base of data,

However, these days it is the tale of the admirable Irrawaddy dolphins, named after the waterway, which captures the imagination most of all.

These graceful swimmers are closely related to the orca (killer whale) with a large, rounded forehead and snub beak. Their gray bodies darken towards slate blue while their abdomens remain a slightly paler shade.

They are commonly seen in groups fewer than six, occasionally emerging for low leaps above the surface but never riding around the bow of passing vessels like their ocean-dwelling cousins.

Unlike dolphins from other Southeast Asian countries – such as Laos, Cambodia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, Bangladesh and India – the Irrawaddy variety of Burma is famous for helping local fishermen.

These adorable creatures communicate with each other through clicks, creaks and buzzes which are thought by marine biologists to be a way of determining their location using a dominant frequency

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Inside the airport, a young immigration officer smiled as I gave him my passport. He was quite chatty, asking me about The Irrawaddy – how we gather news from inside Burma, how we designed our website. With a smile that betrayed his betel-chewing habit – his teeth had a telltale tinge of red – he said he visited our site as often as possible. Meanwhile, the people waiting in line behind me grew impatient as they were made to wait until my friendly interrogation was finally over.

A TV crew from Al Jazeera that came to film my arrival was soon joined by officers from the Special Branch who also wielded cameras. They politely snapped a few photos, and I smiled back at them. I also jokingly told them to make sure they reported the correct information about me to their superiors. They assured me they would, asked me my age, and then left me alone.

Finished at the airport, I made my way to my hotel downtown.

After 20 years promoting organic food and sustainable agriculture, I found myself becoming increasingly cynical about the broader impacts of the food-reform movement. So I closed down my business, sold off my belongings, put on my backpack, and headed to Asia, where I hoped to gain a broader perspective on the environmental and social issues enfolding our planet. It was time to bust myself out of the Bay Area eco-foodie bubble, to which I had grown so accustomed that I believed it wasn’t even a bubble.

Burmese boys.

It didn’t take long. Soon I was venturing into Burma, where I wanted to experience and learn about the plight of the indigenous Hill Tribes of the Golden Triangle (Burma, Thailand, and Laos).

I had encountered a few tribespeople while traveling in Thailand. Many were in refugee camps; some, like the Long Neck tribes (the ones with necklaces that lengthen their necks), had become tourist attractions. In rapidly modernizing Southeast Asia, I wondered whether the fate of these indigenous peoples would be similar to that, say, of the Native Americans.

As dawn broke on my second day,

Today we are able to present you another feature: The Q&A discussion forum! You can find it at forum.ecoburma.com. This forum replaces and expands our previous system to collect requests for new stories. Now you can share what ever you have on your mind about tourism in Burma. And you can comment on other people’s questions or vote on them.

After their return, Burma travelers often feel the strong need to talk about their time in this incredible country. But even if you are just curious what others have to say, head over to the forum.

Of course, we have tried to make the registration procedure as simple as possible and kept it at the minimum that is necessary to prevent spam. You can sign up with you email or your Facebook account.

We hope you will find it useful!

The Irrawaddy is not only full of nature’s beauty but also home to the dolphins which received their name from it – Irrawaddy Dolphins. These adorable creatures are one of the endangered species of the world and are only found in Southeast Asia. Our country is one of the countries that has these dolphins.

According to researchers, there were over a hundred of them before, but now there are only about 50 left. This is because of the toxic mercury discharged from the gold mines located on the banks of the Irrawaddy, which are littering the mercury wastes into the river after using it to purify the gold.

After spending one night at the Bangkok airport where we had to transfer flights, we finally found ourselves in Yangon (Rangoon). This was the beginning of our adventure and fulfillment of a long- standing desire of mine to visit this country. Travelling there feels like a journey to the last century. It is not rare to see horse carts in the streets, experience power cuts several times a day, and see mothers with babies sleeping in the streets.

I was told a joke by a Burmese person: The devil announces a lottery game in hell and that the winner would be able to leave hell and go back to earth on one condition: He has to sleep on an iron bed with electric shocks every night for the rest of his life.

The room had no windows and no air-conditioning, and was located on the top floor of a cheap karaoke bar in Chiang Mai, northern Thailand.

It was late at night, and we were waiting for a driver from a smuggling ring who was to take us north to the Thai-Burmese border where we would cross illegally into Tachilek. Like me, most appeared to be Shan migrant workers, but some were Burman. About half were women. I assumed that none of us had work permits, passports or travel documents, otherwise they would not have chosen this dangerous (and expensive) method of travel.

Most migrant workers in Thailand earn a salary between 3,000 baht and 9,000 baht per month [US $100 to $300]. According to most data from NGOs in Thailand, at least two million Burmese live illegally in the country,

Local people

We were afraid the locals would not be willing to talk to us out of fear that it would cause them problems. In the beginning, they seemed not only very reserved, but sometimes hostile. No warm smiles from ear to ear of the kind we had experienced the year before in Vietnam. However, over time we determined the locals were just being careful. Once they recognized that we were willing to communicate with them openly and listen to their stories, they became unbelievably friendly, accepting us among them, helping us and taking care of us.

To speak with Burmese people, travel with them, sleep in the same place with them and spend all of our time with them was the best experience I have ever had as a traveler. In no other country have I ever felt so “at home” among local people.

However, a person who travels to Burma must primarily want to speak with the people.

This is a worthwhile experience. On most streets there isn’t too much traffic and you are threatened only by missing paving slabs that offer you an unsettling view of the hazy sewage down below. Unlike in Mandalay, people in Rangoon are not on the verge of falling off their bikes when spotting me – a tall white foreigner going for a walk. The locals smiled, they even laughed. Maybe I looked incredibly absurd in their town. Or they felt relieved to see a Westerner immersed in his thoughts, like a swallow as the omen of an approaching political thaw.

This was in 2006, five years ago, and the thaw has yet to come.

In the town center every now and then people talked to me: “Hello!” – they tried to catch up with my steps – “Where are you from?” I let them know: Czech Republic, where I live. And then, after a while, as sure as death and taxes, they asked: