George Fetherling

Three Pagodas Pass: a Roundabout Journey to Burma George Fetherling Unabridged edition

Most western critics of the junta that has ruled Burma since 1962?suppressing the democracy movement and squashing human rights while dominating the international opium trade?have hesitated to visit the country lest the cost of their trip help to prop up the regime. George Fetherling shared these concerns. But motivated by a desire to see the situation first hand, he resolved to go anyway?as cheaply as possible. Starting in Greece, he hitchhiked on a reconditioned Second World War troop ship that took him round the Horn to Polynesia, where frequent-flier points put him within range of Rangoon, Mandalay and the ethnic refugee settlements on the Thai border. En route he explored such places as Casablanca, the Falkland Islands and Antarctica, as well as two of the most isolated yet most written about spots on earth: Easter Island and Pitcairn Island. In the process, he saw in many forms the relics of European colonialism and the nationalist movements that succeeded it, and caught glimpses of a third age that lies round the corner. This unusual narrative is a journey through politics as well as geography, a vivid account of a search for the heart of the post-Cold War world.