He frames his commentary through conversations with the majority Burmese population and the various minorities he meets along his path.Īung San Suu Kyi had once attained the West’s favor. He also grapples with the current political crisis, and specifically the rise of Aung San Suu Kyi. Burma’s leader could also sometimes be seen walking backwards across bridges late at night, apparently on the advice of his seer.”Įimer traveled as far as the government and local militias allowed, to remote areas, to the seemingly people-less capital, and to border scenes, staying with locals whenever possible. “ was a nautical version of his old boss the East India Company, which was plundering India to line the pockets of its shareholders, with every employee eager to gain a private fortune and get back to England before disease carried them off.”Įimer takes you through the more puzzling aspects of Burmese rule, like when he reports on the central role of astrology: “Instead, the planetarium was used by Ne Win’s astrologers for their calculations. Yet Eimer takes care to acknowledge the destructive colonial legacy, here discussing an Anglo pirate who once pillaged Burma’s southern coast: But these types of comparisons represent the detachment of a colonial gaze. Having been there myself, this is an easy image to conjure, as certain parts of Burma remain untouched. “Step back and the people in their traditional clothes, the lack of the trappings of modern life, the cloak of colonial architecture, all conspired to present the city as a sepia image and Burma as a flickering black and white newsreel of a nation.” At times, his take feels like the trope of a white man Orientalizing an Asian country: Previously, he worked as a China correspondent for the Sunday Telegraph and the Southeast Asia correspondent for the Daily Telegraph. He then mingles his observations with historical snapshots.Įimer is a journalist and author based in Bangkok. Eimer gets off the path to describe what most recent tourists have not seen, the less-choreographed version of Burma. Today, foreigners stream steadily into the nation, but the government still limits their routes and controls what they see. For many years, foreigners could not enter this Asian country, which many now call Myanmar. Having said that, the term doesn’t appear again within the pages, and beyond that, it may not have been the author’s decision in the first place.ĭavid Eimer’s travel narrative of Burma, A Savage Dreamland, translates his experiences for a Western audience.

The word “savage” wouldn’t have been my preferred choice in a title about a land and its people, especially given the exploitive colonial legacy in this particular country.

A Savage Dreamland by David Eimer