Myanmar
Rakhine State
February 2010 • Overstayed my visa by 10 days and spent the extra time in Sittwe and Mrauk U, near the border with Bangladesh. Made some good friends in both towns, but the culture was very different from other places I visited in Myanmar. Sittwe especially was hard to get a handle on—an uneasy mix of Buddhists, Muslims, Hindus, Christians, and state control. Simply walking around seemed to invite unwanted attention from drive-by hecklers and idiots on foot. At the government-run hotel, a ministry official accosted me and demanded to see my passport, asking belligerently and repeatedly why I was in the country. Luckily he was too drunk to notice my visa had expired.
