Yangon - It's 7 in the morning and the Shwedagon Pagoda's
gold-covered pinnacle in Myanmar's largest city, Yangon, slowly
emerges from the mist and glitters in the sunshine.
Markets in the city formerly known as Rangoon have been busy for
hours as women balance their purchases in woven baskets on their
heads.
The damage done by Cyclone Nargis in May has been cleared long
ago, but nevertheless, lethargy lies over Yangon.
'No tourists,' a taxi driver laments.
'Most of our rooms are empty,' a hotel manager complains.
A pot of steamed rice at a hotel breakfast buffet remains
untouched while seven waitresses twiddle their thumbs.
The situation in the rest of the South-East Asian country is
similar as tour operators only occasionally obtain customer requests.
After the rainy season ends in October, Myanmar generally enjoys
sunny weather and the main tourist season starts, but tourism
operators agree that so far, nothing can be felt in terms of a high
season.
The military junta's mismanagement over the past 40 years has made
Myanmar, formerly called Burma, one of Asia's poorest countries, even
before the tourism downturn.
Its tourism industry has not been helped by headlines the country
has made in the past 15 months.
In September 2007, the military regime brutally suppressed an
uprising by thousands of Buddhist monks.
Seven months later, Cyclone Nargis smashed into the southern
coastline and devastated the Irrawaddy River Delta and Yangon,
leaving about 138,000 people dead or missing.
Both events have caused foreign tourists to shy away. In November
2007, the largest number of Western tourists came from Germany with
2,151 visitors, according to the tourism ministry. The largest group
of Asian travellers in the same month arrived from neighbouring China
at 3,901.
In January, German arrivals had dwindled to 1,440 visitors, and in
June, this figure had diminished to a mere 177 arrivals.
The prospects for the beginning of this year's high season are
worse still.
'Many potential visitors think the country has been completely
destroyed by the cyclone or that new disasters could happen at any
moment,' says Katharina Vaeth, manager of the Savoy Hotel in Yangon.
'But neither is the case,' she says. 'Destinations like Bagan,
Mandalay, Ngapali Beach and the area around Inle Lake were left
completely untouched by Nargis.'
Other potential travellers only became aware through news coverage
that the country was ruled by the military and subsequently cancelled
their travel plans.
'It is the ordinary Burmese people who suffer most if no tourists
come,' says Carsten Schmidt, managing director of Uniteam travel
agency in Yangon.
Hundreds of hotel maids, drivers, chefs and waitresses have been
laid off since tourist arrivals have dwindled. They are often the
only breadwinners for their large families.
But the junta has shown little interest in the tourism industry,
and the reclusive junta leader, General Than Shwe, exhibits a high
degree of paranoia toward all foreigners.
Hardly any government funds are allocated to develop tourism,
which is why 88 privately run travel agencies, hotels and airlines
have established the Myanmar Marketing Committee, which promotes the
country as a travel destination at international tourism exhibitions.
The ancient royal city of Bagan, also known as Pagan, with its
hundreds of temple ruins, is among the highlights of any Myanmar
visit, but on one October morning, only seven American retirees are
sitting on the flight there from Yangon.
The continuing leg to the northern city of Mandalay and to Inle
Lake has practically no foreign tourists on board.
The 22-kilometre-long lake is located at an elevation of almost
1,000 metres in the Shan hills.
Carefully manicured floating gardens, villages on stilts, and many
hotels and bungalow resorts dot the lake shore, but some of them are
mothballed.
Several dozen motorboats that usually ferry tourists across the
lake lie moored at deserted piers.
Even in the usually tourist-crammed grounds of the Shwedagon
Pagoda, locals mostly have the place to themselves.
A student has discovered a single female foreigner and talks to
her in broken German.
'All German language courses at our university are fully booked,'
he tells her.
She inquires if that is because of all the upcoming jobs to be
filled in the tourism industry.
'No,' replies the young man, 'it's because the only jobs available
at the moment are with German aid organizations.'
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