Nearly half the country is covered in forests, with mountainous borders east with Thailand and north with Tibet, where youll find South East Asians highest peak Hkakabo Razi at 5,881m. Central Myanmar is characterised by wide plains and rivers, where the Irrawaddy River flows over 1,600 km, providing the flood plain basis for the main agricultural industry rice. Burma was previously the largest exporter of rice in the world, but is now one of the ten poorest countries in the world.



The south of the country meets the Bay of Bengal and the southern Mergui Archipelago runs parallel to the shared Burmese Thai peninsula and forms part of the Andaman Sea. Its here that you can cruise hundreds of unexplored islands, undisturbed by the passage of time and the tourist masses of neighbouring Thailand.

With a lack of world demand for Burmese fisheries, the seas are less exploited and richer than most, with little industrial fishing taking place.

Burma is ruled by one of the most brutal military dictatorships in the world. A dictatorship charged by the United Nations with a crime against humanity for its systematic abuses of human rights, and condemned internationally for refusing to transfer power to the legally elected Government of the country the party led by Nobel Peace Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi.

The Burma Campaign UK is part of a global movement campaigning for human rights and democracy in Burma. Our campaigns aim to increase economic pressure on the regime by discouraging investment and tourism. We lobby the UK government and the European Union to increase political pressure on the regime.

The Burma Campaign UK is the only national organisation in the UK dedicated to campaigning for human rights and democracy in Burma.

For so long the pariah state of South East Asia, Myanmar has some outstanding historical and intriguing travel destinations for the intrepid explorer, such as Rangoon, Bagan, and Mandalay names evocative of colonial times, empires and civilisations of yesteryear, and packed full of impressive monuments and ruins.

It has a tropical, hot and humid climate throughout the year, though it can get chilly in the mountainous north. The dry and cool season runs from November to February. March to May is also dry but very hot. The rainy season runs from May to October with the wettest month being October.

The Burma scuba diving season on live boards in the Mergui Archipelago is restricted to the dry season only, so we recommend visiting between November and early May.