Myanmar: Of all the countries in South-East Asia, Burma - or Myanmar, as it is now officially called - is the one over which the thickest fog of misinformation hovers.
The bare facts are clear: a military junta has ruled the country by force since 1962; and although Aung San Sun Kyi's party, the National League for Democracy, won the so-called "free elections" in 1990, her party was infamously never allowed to take power.
Many western countries have chosen not to trade with Burma in protest at its abysmal human rights record and there is a well-publicised campaign urging tourists not to visit. The Burmese government, however, actively welcomes tourists, since all foreign tourists not on package tour visas must change $200 at the airport (you are only permitted to arrive by air) into Foreign Exchange Certificates; one of their ways of attaining precious hard currency.
Package tourists pay in full in advance of their trip, so the government benefits 100 per cent from these visitors, something which anyone considering travelling to Burma should be aware of. For obvious reasons, Burma does not issue visas to journalists. Accordingly, at its embassy in Phnom Penh, I entered a different profession on my application form.
Anything to do with money is a complex see-saw in Burma. In February, the kyat was worth 1,200 to one (cash only) dollar on the black market. At the end of my three weeks there, it was down to 700 and sliding. It was explained to me by local people that at the beginning of March the government had issued statements that the banks (which it controls) could collapse.
People rushed to withdraw money, but they were limited to 200,000 kyat per account in the first week, to 100,000 in the second week and to 50,000 in the third. To control privately-accumulated funds, in the recent past the government has arbitrarily decided overnight to render worthless certain high-denomination notes. For those luckless people who had hoarded money at home in these denominations, they woke one morning to find that their banknotes were literally worth nothing.
There is a huge black market in Burma, the logistics of which confused me at first. School textbooks, for instance, cost 250 kyat at the government rate, but 1,250 at black market rates. I was told this in a shed which served as a village school.
Shouldn't it be the other way round? No, the reason being that only 20 per cent of the required number of textbooks are sold by the government. So, if a Burmese family wants their child to have an education, they are forced to pay four times more on the black market for the books they need. Few village people can afford this, so their children go uneducated - and uneducated people are generally less of a threat to any form of authority.
Out walking through rice-paddies with a local man in Shan state, he told me that in this part of Burma the climate is so hot that the farmers traditionally only plant rice once a year, as there is not enough water for a second crop. Earlier this year, the military visited every farmer in the area and instructed them to plant rice twice in 2003, and to use all spare seed to plant the second crop.
The result, he told me, will be that the second crop will fail - there will be no surplus seed left over for planting next year, so it will have to be bought at great expense from China, and the necessary vegetable crop, which should have been planted in place of the second lot of rice, will now not exist. Needless agrarian disaster. Why? "Because the government does not like it when people have enough to eat," he explained grimly. "They like to keep us under control."
And in full control the military certainly is. In Rangoon and Mandalay, there are huge hand-painted signs, headed with the oxymoron "The People's Desire". Two of them read: "Oppose all foreign nations interfering in internal affairs of the State" and "Crush all internal and external destructive elements as the common enemy".
Soldiers are present in large, intimidating numbers everywhere, openly toting machine-guns. The army regularly occupies private houses for its own use and forces entire towns and villages to relocate elsewhere when it wants to move troops around.
The people of Burma are poor, yet they live in what should be one of the richest countries of South-East Asia, since Burma contains extensive ruby and sapphire mines, the biggest teak forests in the world and the famous Kachin mines, producing jade which is highly prized all over the Far East. But all these natural resources are now owned and controlled by the government and nothing goes back to the people in the same way that their "taxes" never convert into roads or hospitals or 24-hour electricty; the money simply goes straight into the military kitty.
There are many areas of Burma which are strictly off-limits to foreigners. The government does not want them to see people working in forced labour and it certainly does not want them to see the people who are forced to work as human mine-sweepers on the Thai-Burmese border, a rumour I had heard which several people confirmed to me as true. "That's why local people here are very happy with independent tourists visiting," the man who walked with me in the rice paddies explained. "We feel safer; there is no forced labour here. You can walk into any house here and be welcomed."
And it was true. I've never been so welcomed in any other country. Children eveywhere sat down and helped me learn simple Burmese phrases; restaurateurs tried to refuse tips, saying they were just happy I had eaten there; people everywhere gave me gifts - one man came running out of a shop to present me with a tiny jade elephant "for lucky, for lucky"; and many times people shut up their shops when I visited to take me in to drink tea and talk, of course with the understanding that I used no names or even place-names through which they might be identified.
It's impossible to predict what lies ahead for Burma now after close on 150 years of turmoil. The junta does seem horribly entrenched. But one man I met said with great conviction: "A time comes round for everything and our time will come." Let's hope so.
Burma is truly exotic and wildly beautiful, with its landscape of teak forests and the Irrawaddy River; Rangoon's fabulous and immense solid-gold Shwedagon Paya, decorated with thousands of precious gems; its culture of venerating the vast monastic population; the ancient, arcane temples of Bagan; and the ruined royal cities of Mandalay.
There are some backpackers in Burma, but nothing like the numbers elsewhere in Asia. However, I saw a depressingly big number of package tours. To go or not to go has to be an individual decision. If you do go as an independent tourist, carry cash dollars to exchange for kyat through any private hotel or shop, i.e. not at the government bank; stay only in privately-run guesthouses, buy handicrafts from local shops, not government emporiums, and eat in private restaurants. That way, your money goes directly to the people.
And the people, not the sights, are always what makes any journey. Of all the experiences I've had in the last five months, the warmth and hospitality of the Burmese people will shine most brightly in the treasure-trove of my memory.
This is the last of Rosita Boland's On the Road reports from the Far East.