Opportunities in a post-tourism Myanmar

When we entered the tourism space with the launch of Myanmar Adventure Outfitters in 2015, our vision was to create opportunity in isolated communities through introducing a new sector. In our 5 years of operating tours, we’ve pushed further out, worked in a couple dozen communities quite closely, inspired a lot of supplementary economy in communities where fewer opportunities exist. Our outlook was bullish, but COVID came, wreaking of havoc the world over, and no industry harder hit than travel and tourism. Definitely not the sector that could weather a pandemic, so like many in Myanmar, our MAO came to a crashing halt, as did the economic opportunities in our stakeholder communities. A year later with potential of a post-COVID economic recovery on everyone’s mind, political upheaval has shaken Myanmar far more than COVID. Expectations for the future are non-existent for most in Myanmar, and the economy is in upheaval while much of the world is in economic recovery.

But here we are in Lashio, still with the same vision in mind as when we started 6 years ago, to create opportunity in isolated communities. Tourism no longer, and not much expectation for a future in tourism-generated economy in our stakeholder communities, we are still here, and still wanting them to succeed, for needs to be met and to do whatever we can to support these communities who through isolation have fewer opportunities. Now with COVID lockdowns in major centers, and political distress and mounting inflation, times are very tough. MAO has some ventures that we are working on, but will leave that for another time.

But for now, the communities we’ve worked with have intense need. In the past several months, Lashio experienced its first COVID surge, resulting in a lockdown of the city, market closures, and people in villages unable to bring produce from gardening or foraging the jungle to sell in the city. Some of our communities are Tai, most of whom live in rice paddy valleys, and so although there is good farmable land around, there are some still in need in these communities as well, like the elderly or disabled, single parent households, or those without farmland. In Ta’ang mountain-top communities, they have difficult steep mountain side farmland which is typically used for growing mountain rice for personal consumption. With COVID lockdowns in Lashio, they cannot earn income from foraging of young bamboo, mushrooms and stone ginger to sell in Lashio’s markets. In this COVID lockdown season, compounded by political and economic upheaval, this year has been harder than most.

We know there is intense need for just the necessities these days. Additionally, although COVID has mostly stayed outside the villages, with Lashio loosening its boundaries, COVID will eventually make its way to isolated communities as well, and without knowledge about the pandemic and how to treat COVID, we feel we must do what we can to help meet current needs and prevent future medical catastrophes. MAO has always reserved a portion of our profits for community projects, and we still had a significant budget dedicated to that even after a COVID year with no tourism, and so we began to support communities with what we had with a three-pronged approach:

1. COVID EDUCATION AND MEDICINE

   Most communities know very little about COVID. Their plan has been to prevent the spread by locking down, but most have no plans about how to manage and prevent the spread once it makes its way into the community. We have developed a training that we have been giving to village leaders and one who is designated as a community nurse. The training covers mental health for those caring for COVID patients, how to care for people in a home environment, and then how to medicate minor cases and severe cases where patients cannot breathe well. As we know that they don’t have access to medicine in their isolated communities, we provide basic items like a pulse oximeter, paracetamol, and oral rehydration salts, and then have put together medicine prescription packs that they can give for those who cannot breathe well, and come up with a plan on how to get patients to oxygen or oxygen to their community. These are simple things we can do to help them manage COVID when and if it makes its way to their isolated communities. We want them to be thoughtfully prepared for a worst case scenario. If you are interested to use the same resources, we’ve linked access to download at the bottom of the post.

2. FOOD DISTRIBUTION

   In relating with leadership in villages we work in, we and they have assessed the needs. Generally those with greatest need are those without much cultivatable farmland. For some communities this is caused by geographically living on the top of a mountain. Endemic to this area are conflicts resulting in internal displacement, which creates an urgent need, and also typically means that the area they are displaced in is one in which they don’t own cultivatable land. Then there are those who have other factors working against them: elderly, single parents, etc… Through assessing of where there is greatest need, we’ve been raising funds and purchasing an emergency supply of food for a household that includes 12kg of rice, 2L of cooking oil, 1.5kg of salt, 3 cans of fish, and 2kg of beans. For some communities, we can get the food all the way to their village, but for mountain top Ta’ang communities, with no road access, its a community effort that requires many people to come down the mountain, collect the food and hike back up the mountain. If you would like to give locally, contact us on Facebook or call us at 09423067429. If you would like to give internationally, follow the prompts at www.linktr.ee/maoutfitters or email us at impact@myanmaradventureoutfitters.com.

3. CLOTHING & BLANKETS DRIVE

   Seeing a need for clothing and blankets for the coming winter season, we launched a grassroots clothing and blanket drive in Lashio on our FaceBook page. We were expecting a modest response, but have been overwhelmed by the amount of generous people from around Myanmar who have joined our Lashio community with giving what they have to help those in need. We have received many donations from Lashio, Yangon, Mandalay, Kachin State, even as far away as Mon State. The outpouring of generosity has enabled us to do 2 clothing and blanket distributions in 3 isolated Ta’ang villages, and we are still getting more and more clothing each day. Below is a graphic showing the donations received thus far. We are tracking everything, and doing out best to manage your generosity with care. We are so thankful by the generosity of our local Myanmar community. If you would like to give, contact us on our Facebook page, or call us at 09423067429.

REPORTING

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FOOD & COVID RELIEF (MMK)

WE RECEIVED MOST DONATIONS IN USD OR CAD, BUT EXPENSES FOR FOOD AND COVID RELIEF WERE IN MMK.

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243 HOUSEHOLDS | 9 VILLAGES

FOOD RELIEF

• 243 Bags of Rice (12kg)

• 243 Bags of Beans (2kg)

• 243 Bottles of Cooking Oil (486L)

• 243 Bags of salt (365kg)

• 646 Cans of Fish

243 HOUSEHOLDS

COVID RELIEF

• 40 Critical Care Medicine Packages for Severe COVID cases

• 7 Basic Care Medicine Packages including, Paracetamol, ORS, & Oximeters

• 16 Oxygen Regulators to fit oxygen bottles

9 VILLAGES: 3 Tai, 4 ta’ang, 1 wa, 1 lahu / Lisu

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SEPTEMBER CLOTHING & BLANKET DONATIONS

20+ DONORS FROM LASHIO, YANGON, & MANDALAY

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DOWNLOAD COVID-19 RESOURCES:

Tourism needs to meet Sustainable Development Goals

Development needs are all over the canvas that MAO works in. Every community is the same in a lot of ways in that the needs are the same, but what is not all the same is the feeling from the community about which needs are the most essential. Working together with a community to bring about solutions to problems that they know they have and they want to fix, this will result in development that is not just sexy for advertising but actually is embraced and changes lives.

On our first visits with new communities we work with, we want to learn about the community from the perspective of the people and the leaders in the community. We talk about the demographics of their community, the education situation, local environment, needs and felt needs, etc… This gives us a starting point for relationship that tourism that can impact in a productive and sustainable way. In development training, one thing we learn is that projects will be embraced and development can happen when we address felt needs, even though from our perspective we may see the needs as different than the community. Better to help address felt needs first, whether they are actual needs or not, because in that develops a relationship that shows that you care for the things they care for. From a basis of trust like this, the door opens to all sorts of opportunities. This past year, in one community we stepped too quickly into looking to provide solutions before the trust was established, and it has failed miserably. We gotta build the trust and value the thoughts and feelings of the communities we work in first and foremost. Our goals are to link our company that looks like tourism with a goal of development, but for the communities we work in, tourism is a thing they don’t understand.

We feel that there is so much more potential for tourism to create impact that what it is producing. Tourism is unattainable for so many who work 7 days a week, 52 weeks a year, just to make enough to survive off of. However, those who travel to these places, tourism is not only attainable but considered as a right…not a luxury. There is a degree of privilege that exists amongst those who travel that doesn’t exist in the communities they are often going to. For this reason, we believe that tourism needs to make a bigger impact on the villages we work in, and its also the reason we want to champion sustainable tourism development. Tourism needs to be a catalyst toward change and development. I like to look back towards the UN’s SDG’s and consider how we can utilize our own company to reach sustainable development goals, and then how we can partner with other organizations and people who can bring development in a way that is outside of our scope and ability, but are also needs in the communities we work in.

If you’re unfamiliar with the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals…

We see potential for tourism to aid in helping promote many, if not all of these goals, and if we don’t have the capacity as MAO, we can link to people who do (#17 Partnerships), and bring about a wholistic form of development along with our goals of creating work and economic growth in remote communities. So far, we’ve chosen to really make investment in a few of these goals, but are not limiting ourselves to only these in the future. There are things that we do that indirectly contribute to other goals, but we want to point out the things that we are intentionally engaging.

Creating opportunity through economy in remote communities to give opportunity for people at home, so that they don’t feel the need to move abroad illegally to a life of certain exploitation. This is why we launched into business in the first place.

Our goal in starting MAO is creating opportunities that protect people and create economic opportunity. The logical conclusion is to invest our profit and link our clients to creating education solutions for families who want to educate their kids, but lack the financials to be able to send their kids to live in education hostels in the city for high school.

We have vision for many things, but lack the resources or skillset to effect change. We love to network and connect with CSO’s, NGO’s and just individuals who have skills that can be useful in the communities we engage. We have the relational trust and want to link our communities to solutions to problems that they have, but are outside our capacity.

Having experience in WASH (Water and Sanitation Health) training, we’ve both provided our hosting families with water filters, as well as partnered (#17) with others to develop village-wide long term solution biosand water filtration systems.

We are constantly seeing our beautiful spots littered with trash. People from the city come out to remote areas for pleasure, and as much as we love people experiencing nature, we don’t love the trash that gets left behind. So we partnered (#17) with Trash Hero to launch a chapter in Lashio and stimulate both a care for the environment and climate action.

Our goal is that by being a link in the chain of development, we can inspire others in the tourism sector to embrace a similar mindset of transformational toursim. There is so much more potential that we need to unlock in the industry, and we all can be part of being a link in the chain to bring development in all the communities that tourism in Myanmar touches.

There are a lot of great sustainable tourism options in Myanmar who are also seeing potential for development to happen. In future posts, we will profile other companies who we know who embrace the 17 SDG’s, who embody these same ideals and promote responsible travel all around Myanmar.

Relationships through Cliff Jumping

There is a village we spend a lot, I mean A LOT of time in from January to June, because its the community that is host to an incredible waterfall adventure that MAO operates. It also happens to be the time of year when the kids have time off school, so more time to come and hang out. When we show up, the kids start chattering and by the time we are ready to guide people down to the falls, a group has formed who both participates in and brings joy to both us and our clients. Our guys have become like heroes for these boys and young men, and have an open door to influence them positively. Lots of young men end up using and becoming addicted to drugs in Northern Shan, as this region is a source of a large amount of production, so we are trying to develop opportunities to influence this younger generation to make wise decisions with their future. A lot of them now want to be guides because the men they look up to work with MAO, and guide in their backyard waterfalls, so we need to capitalize on this relationship capital and start investing in these kids so that they make the foundational wise decisions now to stay committed to school, keep away from drugs and addicting substances, so that in the days of their youth they can pave the way for a future. We are right now in the discussing stage of creating a young men’s group that meets a couple times a month, but have yet to set a plan in motion.

Just on the edge of their village drops a waterfall that we’ve coined Dark Horse Falls, as we feel like it is a dark horse favorite for best waterfall in Myanmar. We’ve compiled a video titles Dark Horse Men to celebrate our MAO guys insanity and the courage of the young generation in the village.

Our Myanmar Adventure Outfitters crew has lots of fun engaging with the local kids and pushing our boundaries and skills. 2019 season is coming to a close as the rains come, so celebrating with this cliff jumping edit.

Managing Risk in Face of Mourning

This past week in Hsipaw, in our Northern Shan State, a South Korean female traveler died while on a river tubing adventure. It is so sad to hear of this loss for her family and friends, and we empathize with the guide who was taking her on an adventure that suddenly went from joy to tragedy.

But this tragedy also serves as a warning, perhaps a wakeup call for many in the industry, which in Myanmar is largely uncontrolled. Coming from Canada, there are so many regulations and requirements to be able to guide people on adventures like this, and my feeling is that Myanmar guides in the adventure sector are far too cavalier with safety.

In each activity we offer, we must consider the worst case scenario, and be able to plan and prepare for these scenarios. Hopefully we never have to put our preparation into action, however it is inevitable when we do things that have risk. Guides knowing how to manage risk, as well as respond in a calculated and effective way when tragedy comes knocking on the door.

Myanmar has a guide training program, which perhaps serves the purpose of preparing people with knowledge about the country and how to show landmarks, but it does very little, if anything, to prepare people for adventure preparedness. There are no requirements. One can just start a river tubing company, and not know how to perform first aid, not know how save someone who is drowning, and even worse, not know how to swim at all. So what happens when someone gets trapped under a rock in the rapids??? Well, tragedy results!

There are lots of things we would like to do, but managing risk keeps us wise and honest with our capability. We know of several caves, but are not guiding them, because we don’t have sufficient experience in cave rescue. However, we do a lot of water activities. Knowing our waterfalls and rivers is essential. Doing the research, not with clients, and know how to prepare them for every risk they may encounter, this is our job as guides. We need to assess the risk, and steer our clients away from things that could endanger them. Now this is the challenge, those who are thirsty for adventure find energy from the adrenaline of risk, and so we embrace both risk and then managing the risk! It is why when we guide waterfalls, specifically with strong current, or paddle board on the river or lake, we require at least one lifeguard certified guide or staff member be with our clients.

Preparation takes time and commitment to safety and walking through each scenario as a team. It takes being prepared with first aid kits with us at all times. It requires that we have practiced rescue and rescue techniques.

People come to us as the experts, and we need to be experts in every way. I would love the adventure guiding industry in Myanmar to invest in expertise and requirements for adventure activities as well. It is time! Let’s not lose another life before changes are made in the adventure industry in Myanmar.

"I Can't Wait to come to Lashio!"

In chatting with a Yangon expat recently in response to our Instagram Story, they wrote to me, “I can’t wait to come to Lashio!” Investing in this place, seeing all the amazing potential, and building deep relationships here, we are stoked that we are putting Lashio on the map. Indeed, it is an amazing place, but few have seen it the way we see it, and we are excited to hear more people exclaim the same.

We have been working at bridging two areas we work together, and this week we’ve found some great things to help push a little further out. We have taken a couple river trips in a remote backcountry area, and made a couple videos we want to share. The first video we collaborated with Nice Studio out of Lashio to edit our GoPro footage. The second video is what happened when we put some of the same footage through the Cameo app made by Vimeo. They have a very different feel, and we are hoping good media will inspire more to exclaim, “I can’t wait to come to Lashio!”