Yangon

It's a new era in Myanmar as the country opens up to political reforms - and to a growing number of  tourists. Long isolated and little known to Westerners, the country once known as Burma offers a window on life in Asia before the advent of Starbucks and W hotels. Friendly Planet Travel offers a 13-day tour called Mystical Myanmar with airfare from Los Angeles for $3,299 per person -- and an extra $100 discount for those who book soon. The tour starts with a flight to the former capital Yangon via Taipei, Taiwan.

Opposition leader and Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi was freed Saturday in Myanmar after years in detention as a huge crowd presented flowers and chanted "Long Live Suu Kyi. " Soldiers armed with rifles and tear gas launchers pushed aside the barbed-wire barriers blocking her street at 5:15 p.m., leading to a gleeful dash the final 100 yards to her gate. Twenty minutes later, the slight pro-democracy opposition figure known here simply as "the lady" popped her head over her red spiked fence to a roar from jubilant supporters.

As I sat on a high ledge of the 734-year-old Mingalarzedi Temple, looking out over the hundreds of ancient temples around Bagan, I wondered how long it would take a visitor to see them all. Archaeologists say there once were about 5,000 temples, but earthquakes, decay and long-ago looters have destroyed more than half of them. Still, that's a lot of temples to explore in this 16-square-mile archaeological treasure trove. We visited Myanmar in February 2010 and, yes, I did feel a twinge of guilt when booking the trip.

Some people wonder if I can really work with music blaring on my headphones--especially music with distracting lyrics. But my brain is hard-wired a different way: The lyrics inspire me, and help the creativity kick in. It's like this amplification effect: Most of the Column Ones take emotions to a higher level, be they joy, or grief or amusement. To borrow from “Spinal Tap,” the music turns the volume of feelings up to 11. This week, though, a story-song combo for an upcoming Column One was almost too much.

WASHINGTON - Myanmar's opposition leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, met privately with President Obama after accepting Congress' highest honor in an emotional ceremony Wednesday, signs of the stunning shift in U.S. relations with the onetime pariah Asian nation over the last year. The Obama administration not only welcomed the former political prisoner and Nobel laureate, but it offered a gesture of goodwill by easing sanctions against Myanmar's leaders, as Suu Kyi has urged since she arrived Monday on a 17-day U.S. tour, including a visit to Los Angeles.

It wasn't your everyday picnic. Instead of shorts and jeans, some of the women wore sarongs. Tables were covered with exotic Asian fabrics. And the food was even more exotic--chicken smothered in spices, noodle salad with mango dressing, jasmine rice flavored with coconut and served in an antique silver bowl from northern Thailand. Although the look and the flavors were tropical, the location was South Pasadena, the home of Molly Kellogg and her husband, landscape designer Mark Brownstein.

A court's decision Friday to postpone the much-awaited verdict in a politically sensitive case against opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi fits into a broader pattern of Myanmar's military rulers using timing, leverage and blunt force in the interest of political survival, analysts said. Suu Kyi, 64, faces up to five years in prison on charges of harboring an American who swam across a lake in May and stayed for two days at her home, where she is under house arrest.

NEW DELHI - At least 58 people were missing and feared dead Tuesday after a boat capsized off Myanmar while residents tried to flee an approaching cyclone, United Nations officials said. The boat was carrying about 100 Rohingya Muslims, many of whom lived in camps in low-lying areas to escape Buddhist-Muslim violence, officials said. The boat apparently ran into rocks off Pauktaw township in the western state Rakhine and sank late Monday as people were evacuating, said Aye Win, spokesman for the U.N. Information Center in Myanmar, based on preliminary information.

Myanmar, formerly known as Burma, holds national elections Sunday. The balloting, the first multi-party elections in 30 years, is widely regarded as a farce because major opposition leaders have been locked up. Amnesty International has cited widespread human rights abuses in Myanmar. Because the military regime has declared that results will not be released for at least 21 days after the balloting, many opposition figures conclude that the outcome will be rigged.

SHWEPYITHA, Myanmar - After her heroin-addict husband died five years ago, Ei Ei Phyu discovered she was HIV-positive. She thought her life was over until friends directed her to the open-air clinic here where she receives antiretroviral medicine. "This place has been a blessing," she said. Phyu and thousands of other patients in Myanmar and beyond owe their health to a French countess, Albina du Boisrouvray, 70. Inspired by the memory of her late son and her inherited fortune, she created the charity Assn.