Tourism in Bagan
“Bagan is an areas upon which the military is acting out their revenge, because women bring basins of bananas and coconuts to offer in the ancient temples, while wishing for the military coup junta to fail!”
Many foreigners who have been to Myanmar or know Myanmar well, know that Bagan is the Buddhist heartland of Myanmar and a UNESCO world heritage site. Due to the large number and variety of its many ancient temples and pagodas, mural paintings and stone inscriptions, and other impressive features, local visitors and tourists make sure they visit Bagan, and it is an especially important place for those coming to the country for pilgrimage or meditation. Anyone who has been there remembers it well and would be happy to return to Bagan.
Recently, a Bagan tour guide told me that she saw many local visitors in Bagan during the Myanmar New Year period. It is a good sign to see that local tourism has been re-activated and this gives reason for optimism, although there was strong criticism of the crowds of visitors in Bagan during the Water Festival period in this hard time because the activists of Spring Revolution are appealing to people not to join the festivals that are organized by the Tatmadaw. This is an understandable situation because people did not want to go to the SAC-organized Water Festival stages, and many people went away from the cities where the SAC was trying to show that the country is peaceful “back to normal,” with people enjoying the Water Festival. From the said tour guide who has been actively involved in the Spring Revolution since the time of the military coup, she commented that local tourism should be resumed again, just for the local people’s survival and their sustainable economic development, but not to fall into the trap of the SAC-supported or cronies’ businesses. She explained, “Only when the civilians’ businesses were developed again, then they would be able to support the revolution. But visitors should not go and stay at the hotels of cronies or the pro-military.” She continued, “Otherwise, the local people will become unemployed and they may fall back into poverty.” It is true that the author witnessed and heard the stories from some local people in Bagan in March 2022. The people from the area have experienced a deep economic crisis and many young people have become unemployed due to a near total collapse of Myanmar’s tourism industry after the 2021 de facto military coup. The author heard of some unemployed youths who went up to the cities to find jobs but they came back to Bagan without finding jobs. The most sorrowful stories are those about the shortage of alms-food for the monastics in Bagan, and which we sincerely request financial support from readers who may wish to give back to those now suffering in such a special place. Since the Bagan area is a tropical region and it could mainly rely on tourism in peaceful times, agriculture is also not a good means of livelihood for the local grassroots there. Most of the people work on palm gardens, but their palm-sugar production businesses and traditional food productions are not providing good solutions for their survival as they have mainly relied on tourism and they do not have good markets to distribute their produce to the other areas of the country as well.
For this reason to help the local grass roots in Bagan, the hotels and the inn owners are trying to revive local tourism though there is no likelihood they can expect international tourists due to the political situation in the country. However, in trying to revive tourism they have had to face criticism from different perspectives. Many people are concerned that international communities will misinterpret any improved situations as stable and peaceful as the coup junta is trying to show. Nevertheless it seems that local tourism has resumed to some extent as there have recently been many visitors to Bagan from all around the country, visitors who wanted to stay away from the cities and the SAC-organized Water Festival stages as well. In fact, the author himself witnessed the total refusal of the people to participate in the SAC’s Water Festival in Bagan just as was happening in all other areas of the country. To his surprise he saw the trucks and cars of visitors to Bagan driving on different roads and streets and keeping away from where there was a stage constructed by the SAC’s administration water festival committee. And no one local was enjoying the SAC Water Festival!
Another reason why the hotels cannot operate as before are the frequent cuts to the electricity supply. Many local visitors and the author himself noticed that the hotels could not provide facilities up to the previous standard due to the shortage of electricity and the increasing price of fuel as well. Bagan is an areas upon which the military is acting out their revenge, because women bring basins of bananas and coconuts to offer in the ancient temples, while wishing for the military coup junta to fail!
In conclusion, for all the above reasons, local tourism is not likely to be able to resume in Bagan in the near future, and it seems the local grassroots people will still be unemployed and in a deep economic crisis for a long time to come. At the same time, the monastics in Bagan still need to survive on food and medicine alms. What the author witnessed was that most of them were facing lack of nutrition and medicine. Since the author could not bear to see the monastics in such hardship, he recently organized a small contribution of food for five monastics there.