Journalist Adam Skolnick on Travel Writing and Human Rights in Myanmar

🌍 The Moment I Put Down My Notebook and Listened

The rain in Taunggyi fell in silver needles—cold, insistent—stitching the hillside town into silence. I stood under the eaves of a teashop, steam rising from my mohinga bowl, watching a woman in a faded longyi fold a stack of hand-stitched pamphlets. She didn’t speak English. I didn’t speak Burmese. But when she slid one across the worn wooden counter—‘What We Remember’, printed on recycled paper, with a photo of a student protest in 2019—I knew my assignment had just changed. Journalist Adam Skolnick’s advice echoed in my head: ‘Travel writing isn’t about capturing places—it’s about honoring what people choose to tell you, and what they ask you not to.’ That pamphlet became my first real lesson in how to write about Myanmar without flattening its complexity. This is how I learned to travel differently—not as an observer, but as a witness who checks their position before reaching for a pen.

✈️ The Setup: Why I Went—and What I Thought I’d Find

I arrived in Yangon in late October 2022, six months after Adam Skolnick published his long-form essay on ethical travel writing in post-coup Myanmar 1. I’d read it twice—first for craft, then for conscience. Skolnick wasn’t reporting *from* Myanmar at that time; he was reflecting on what responsible documentation requires when access is constrained, trust is fragile, and safety is non-negotiable. His argument—that travel writing must abandon ‘discovery’ narratives and instead center local agency—had unsettled me. As someone who’d written breezy pieces about temple sunrises and street-food tours, I felt unprepared. So I applied for a journalist visa (not a tourist visa), citing editorial affiliation with a nonprofit media outlet focused on Southeast Asian civic life. It took eight weeks. When the stamp appeared in my passport, it wasn’t permission to explore—it was a conditional invitation to listen.

The monsoon had receded, leaving the air thick with petrichor and diesel fumes. Yangon’s streets hummed with quiet urgency: motorbike taxis weaving past shuttered bookshops, students cycling past billboards advertising mobile data plans with slogans like ‘Stay Connected. Stay Informed.’ I stayed in a guesthouse near Sule Pagoda run by a retired teacher named Daw Mya. Her three-room compound had no Wi-Fi—but a shared landline, a shelf of dog-eared Aung San Suu Kyi biographies (some with pages torn out), and a thermos of ginger tea she refilled without being asked. On my second morning, she handed me a folded map drawn in pencil. Not of pagodas or markets—but of safe houses, community libraries, and two small clinics offering free mental health counseling. ‘For if you need to rest your eyes,’ she said. ‘Not just your feet.’

🗺️ The Turning Point: When the Story Refused to Be Told

I’d planned to visit Bagan, Mandalay, and Inle Lake—the ‘classic triangle’ for cultural travel writing. But in Yangon, I met Ma Thida, a former political prisoner turned literature professor, over steamed rice and bitter melon soup at her apartment in Thingangyun. She spoke softly, her hands steady as she poured tea. When I mentioned my itinerary, she paused. ‘Bagan has 2,200 temples,’ she said. ‘But do you know how many families were displaced to build the new airport road? Or how many villagers lost land to hotel developers claiming ‘tourism development’?’ She didn’t lecture. She offered numbers—verified by land rights NGOs operating underground—and then asked: ‘Will your readers see the temples—or the people who rebuilt them, stone by stone, after Cyclone Nargis?’

That question lodged itself like grit in my eye. I canceled my Bagan flight. Instead, I spent three days in Hlaingthaya Township, a peri-urban zone where garment factories cluster beside flooded paddy fields. There, I walked with Win Maw, a labor organizer who’d been detained twice. He showed me where workers gathered at dawn—not for shifts, but for silent vigils commemorating colleagues killed in factory collapses. He pointed to a mural painted on a crumbling wall: five women holding hands, faces half-obscured by masks. ‘They’re not anonymous,’ he said. ‘We name them every time we pass. But names don’t travel well in articles. Too risky.’

My notebook filled—not with descriptions of sunsets over Ananda Temple, but with fragments: the smell of boiled cassava leaves fermenting in clay pots outside a home-based textile co-op; the vibration of a loom operated by a grandmother whose grandson hadn’t returned from military conscription; the exact pitch of laughter from children playing hopscotch on a cracked sidewalk, just meters from a checkpoint where soldiers scanned IDs.

📸 The Discovery: People Who Wrote Their Own Narratives

In Taunggyi, I met a collective called Tha Pyay (‘The Light’)—six writers, photographers, and oral historians documenting daily resistance through storytelling workshops held in monasteries, tea shops, and private homes. They didn’t want foreign bylines. They wanted translators, editors, and secure channels to share work regionally. One evening, we sat on bamboo mats in a monk’s cell while U Kyaw Zaw played audio recordings of elders recounting village histories erased from state textbooks. The tape hissed between phrases. ‘This isn’t nostalgia,’ he explained, rewinding carefully. ‘It’s evidence. And evidence needs witnesses who stay quiet long enough to hear the gaps.’

I began carrying two notebooks: one for observations, one for verbatim quotes—only those given with explicit consent, recorded with permission, and reviewed by speakers before inclusion. I learned to ask: ‘Is this story yours to share? With whom? In what form? For how long?’ Not rhetorical questions—they demanded answers, sometimes delays, sometimes refusal. When a young poet declined to be quoted on her poem about detention centers, she handed me a copy typed on onion-skin paper and said, ‘Read it aloud to yourself once. Then burn it. That’s how it lives now.’ I did. The ash smelled like burnt sugar and ink.

Practical insight came quietly: transport wasn’t just logistics—it was relationship-building. I took local buses instead of hiring cars. On the Yangon–Taunggyi route, the conductor—a man named Tin Maung—taught me basic Burmese phrases by drawing characters on ticket stubs. He also warned me which stops to avoid after dark (‘Not unsafe—but some soldiers ask too many questions there’). He never asked for money beyond fare. At one roadside stop, vendors sold roasted corn wrapped in banana leaves and packets of dried mango dusted with chili salt. I bought three portions—not for taste alone, but because each transaction anchored me in reciprocity, not extraction.

🎭 The Journey Continues: Writing Without Ownership

Back in Yangon, I edited my drafts with Ma Thida and two members of Tha Pyay. We met in rotating locations: a shuttered cinema lobby, a rooftop garden with a view of Shwedagon’s spire, a borrowed office above a noodle shop. They didn’t correct grammar—they challenged framing. When I wrote, ‘The resilience of Myanmar’s people shines through hardship,’ Ma Thida crossed it out. ‘Resilience isn’t shining,’ she said. ‘It’s exhausting. Say what it costs them.’ So I rewrote: ‘Resilience here means working two jobs while hiding documents, teaching history without textbooks, and choosing which memories to keep—and which to bury so children can sleep.’

Skolnick’s framework emerged not as theory, but as practice: travel writing as stewardship, not spectacle. I stopped photographing faces without consent. I stopped using ‘ancient’ to describe living traditions. I stopped listing ‘must-see’ sites without naming who maintained them—and at what cost. When I visited Inle Lake later—not for floating gardens, but to document cooperative fishing techniques threatened by sedimentation and tourism-driven dredging—I filmed only with permission, credited boat-builders by name, and included GPS coordinates of water-testing stations run by local environmental groups.

One afternoon, I sat with Daw Mya again, watching monsoon clouds gather over the Rangoon River. She handed me a small, cloth-wrapped bundle. Inside: a hand-sewn journal bound in indigo-dyed cotton, blank except for the first page, which read in Burmese script: ‘Your words are guests. Let them stay only if they serve the house.’

🤝 Reflection: What This Trip Taught Me About Travel—and Myself

This wasn’t a trip about seeing more. It was about seeing less—less of what I expected, less of what I assumed I had a right to witness, less of the surface that travel brochures polish into gloss. I learned that ethical travel writing begins long before arrival: in visa applications that disclose intent, in pre-trip research that prioritizes local-language sources over Western think tanks, in budgets that allocate funds for translation and honorariums—not just accommodation.

My biggest misconception was thinking ‘access’ meant proximity. In Myanmar, access meant patience. It meant accepting that some stories would remain unwritten—not because they weren’t important, but because their telling required conditions I couldn’t guarantee. I learned to measure success not by word count, but by whether someone said, ‘You got it right,’ or ‘You left space for us to speak next.’

Travel didn’t shrink my worldview—it expanded it with friction. Every ‘no’ to a photograph, every delayed response to an interview request, every time I chose silence over a quote: these weren’t failures. They were permissions—granted slowly, conditionally, and always revocable. That humility didn’t diminish my role as a writer. It clarified it.

📝 Practical Takeaways: What Readers Can Apply to Their Own Travels

Here’s how that translated into daily decisions:

• 🧭 Before departure: I verified visa requirements with Myanmar’s Ministry of Immigration and Population—not third-party agencies—and cross-referenced restrictions with the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP) 2. Tourist visas prohibit journalism; journalist visas require sponsorship and restrict movement in conflict-affected areas like Rakhine or Kayin States.
• 🗣️ Language matters: I used ‘Myanmar’ consistently (the country’s official name), avoided ‘Burmese’ when referring to ethnic minorities (e.g., Karen, Kachin, Rohingya), and double-checked terminology with local editors. ‘Rohingya’ is self-identified; ‘Bengali’ is a state-imposed label rejected by the community 3.
• 📱 Digital caution: I used Signal for encrypted messaging (with Burmese-speaking contacts), disabled location services, and stored interviews offline on password-protected devices. No cloud backups. No geotagged photos. Local partners advised against using Facebook Messenger—even with encryption enabled—as metadata could be harvested.
• 🍜 Economic ethics: I paid artisans directly—not middlemen—and asked fair price ranges beforehand. When buying from cooperatives, I confirmed profit-sharing models. In Hlaingthaya, I ate at worker-run canteens where meals cost 1,200 MMK (~$0.60 USD), not ‘authentic experience’ restaurants charging $12 for the same dish.

🌅 Conclusion: How This Trip Changed My Perspective

Leaving Yangon, I didn’t carry souvenirs. I carried Daw Mya’s journal, a USB drive with consent-reviewed audio files, and a single line from U Kyaw Zaw’s mural inscription: ‘Light does not belong to the lamp. It belongs to the room.’ Travel writing, I realized, isn’t about illuminating places—it’s about ensuring the light serves those who live there. Adam Skolnick didn’t teach me how to write better about Myanmar. He taught me how to write *with* it—slower, quieter, and always answerable. That shift—from chronicler to custodian—didn’t make my work less vivid. It made it truer. And truth, in places where narrative control is contested, is never passive. It’s practiced—one permission, one translation, one withheld photograph at a time.

❓ FAQs: Practical Questions After Reading