Excerpts from Ben Schreckinger’s travelogue in Global Post

YANGON, Myanmar – On the first morning we set out into Myanmar to discover how the country is changing, we went to one of the places in Yangon that for centuries has largely stayed the same: Shwedagon Pagoda. The 368-foot gold structure predates the city itself and serves as an emblem of the country. It has existed in its present form for centuries, and archeologists believe that the pagoda houses more ancient structures within its gilded walls (Burmese Buddhists believe it also houses eight hairs plucked from Siddhartha Gautama’s head).But we were concerned with more recent history. The day before, senior AP correspondent Aye Aye Win had expressed to us her skepticism at the breathless tone with which foreign media have been reporting on the country’s reforms. The reforms, she said, had not yet changed the lives of average citizens. So, besides winning merit by applying small squares of gold leaf to the chests of Buddha statues, we went to the pagoda – the place where thousands of monks converged in September 2007 in support of the so-called Saffron Revolution- to get a sense of whether the high-level reforms initiated since 2011 were being felt on the ground. The hill on which the Shwedagon Pagoda sits is packed with lesser Buddhist shrines. The covered stairs of the approach we took were lined on either side with shops. more…