Article: Burmese days: the junta is content to rule over ruin.(World)

AS THE WHEELS LOCKED DOWN on the final approach to Burma's Yangon Airport, the young Japanese diplomat sitting next to me said; "If you haven't been here since '95, I expect you will see a lot of changes." The cavernous marble and glass terminal building, its corridors echoing with the footsteps of our arriving planeload of people, was new. The smiling, attractive, female immigration and customs officers were quite a change from the scowling, hostile guys I had become familiar with in previous visits, scattered between 1971 and 1995. The Kuwaiti Government Airbus parked at the only other active gate was new, too, but somehow not surprising.

As I stood in the ...

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