Myanmar - The Scoop

Rangoon (whoops, Yangon) has the feel of 1938 Berlin. To hell with a cop on every corner, this place has got a loaded troop carrier on every corner. If it isn't NLD college kids out for a Sunday stroll en masse, truckloads of pissed Buddhist monks (or "external stooges" dressed up like monks, according to SLORC) are hurling Molotov cocktails at Muslim mosques. There are so many plainclothes spooks on the street, SLORC might consider eschewing a uniform budget altogether. Myanmar lucked out and hopped onto the ASEAN hayride in July 1997 along with Laos and Cambodia. The only one that really deserved it was Laos. Meanwhile, Unocal is forging ahead with its $1 billion natural gas pipeline, Aung San Suu Kyi remains as accessible as Carlos the Jackal, and the last remaining insurgency, the KNU's struggle, is getting smoked in the south. Myanmar is the very definition of "hard line."

Aside from politics, there's also news to upset eco-types: Myanmar grows about 75 percent of the tropical teak left in the world. The government, the Karens and the Shans, along with about 20 Thai logging companies, are rapidly sawing everything down before the political winds shift direction. According to some estimates, in 10 to 15 years, there won't be enough teak left to put together a decent deck chair.