Early in the morning young monks walk the streets of Nyaungshwe. Each monk has his round alms bowl and they go around to houses, shops or market stalls where people wait to put something in their bowl. © Tony Redhead

With my good friends Nick and Janelle Rains and Heather Petty I stood, for the first time, on the soil of the country of Myanmar, formerly Burma, on the 17th of November 2018. I’d just flown from Adelaide via Canberra and Singapore to Mandalay in preparation of spending the next 17 days exploring just a small part of this huge country.

Over the coming weeks I would visit places that had only been dots on a map. Places like Pin oO Lwin, Monyawa, Bagan, Inle Lake, Kyaiktiyo and Yangon. I’d discover caves filled to the brim with thousands of Buddha statues, Pagodas gleaming with golden spires, lines of monks walking the streets at sunrise, exploding balloons showering me with exploding rockets and strange discoveries in Yangon.

In the end, I would find myself not wanting to leave and wishing to stay and explore more of what this amazing country and people have to offer.

Now, I’m confronted by scenes of the military opening fire on unarmed protestors. Myanmar's military seized power on February 1, ousting the civilian government and arresting its leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, effectively ending Myanmar's decade-long experiment with democracy after close to half a century of military rule.

I hope those I met while travelling through Myanmar are safe and that peace will return.

If you want to keep up with the news from Myanmar and the struggle for Democracy, the Myanmar Now website has excellent articles on the latest Myanmar news.

Myanmar (formerly Burma) is a Southeast Asian nation of more than 100 ethnic groups, bordering India, Bangladesh, China, Laos, and Thailand. Yangon (formerly Rangoon), the country's largest city, is home to bustling markets, numerous parks and lakes, and the towering, gilded Shwedagon Pagoda, which contains Buddhist relics and dates to the 6th century.