Customer Reviews

The Native Tourist: A Holiday Pilgrimage in Myanmar

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I've been reading a lot of Myanmar related books in the past few years having spent 2 months there over 2 trips. This one didn't really teach me anything major, maybe a few "ah hahs". The author does have a good wit. Some of the writing is mundane - I ate x, I went and saw y. Worth a read if you don't expect much. Me, I was much more impressed by "Burma/Myanmar: What everyone needs to know".

Whether you call it Myanmar or Burma, this Southeast Asian country is little-known to most Westerners. Travelers who venture into its borders almost universally fall in love with the beauty of this place and with its delightful people, but their viewpoints are usually limited to what they see in a matter of days--or at best a couple of weeks.

I can't remember when I first read The Native Tourist, but I picked it up with no expectations and no knowledge of Myanmar, except that it bordered the country I love and live in, which is Thailand. I didn't even know if the writer was male or female at first--until I realized that few men would travel with their tube of red lipstick.

Few Myanmar women did either at the time this book was written, and Ma Thanegi was a shocking anomaly, with her cropped hair and her lipstick and her solitary travels in a country where women cluster in groups. But it's her iconoclastic, unconventional point of view that makes her book sheer pleasure to read.

With deep respect for her pilgrimage and her fellow-pilgrims, Ma Thanegi buses her way around sacred spots in her native land, always taking notes, always eating, always looking for good stories. By the end of this book, I fell in love with Myanmar and the lady who showed it to me. I'm willing to bet you will too, both with The Native Tourist and her latest Myanmar adventure chronicle, Defiled on the Ayeyarwaddy.