Is It Ethical to Travel to Myanmar? An Honest Assessment

Myanmar contains some of Asia's most extraordinary sights — Bagan's two thousand temples, Inle Lake's leg-rowing fishermen, the golden rock of Kyaiktiyo. Since the 2021 military coup, it also contains a civil war, thousands of political prisoners, and a tourism question with no comfortable answer.

The case against going is direct: visa fees and some tourism revenue flow to the junta, your presence can be used as propaganda, and large parts of the country — including areas around popular destinations — are active conflict zones. Most foreign governments advise against all travel.

The case for going, made by many Burmese themselves, is that small-scale tourism feeds guesthouse owners, guides and market vendors who have been abandoned twice — first by the coup, then by the world. Money spent carefully, locally and privately bypasses the state almost entirely.

There is no neutral choice. If you go, go informed: follow the civil disobedience movement's guidance, avoid all state-owned hotels and transport, carry cash for local businesses, and never photograph checkpoints or soldiers. If you do not go, that is a respectable answer too — solidarity takes many forms, and absence can be one of them.