Tuanggyi. Old British base. Heho is the closest runway. I flew there in the
mid-80's spraying opium poppies.

I also wrote a story about it that was copyrighted and a sailplane (owned by
the German charge d'affairs) was part of it. If you could get up and out of
the plains, the mountains to the east are, well, the highest in the world.
But if you have ever read about "flying the hump", you know that if you go
down, you won't be found...ever.

And more than once, I saw tigers running along the tree lines with their
cubs. There are more snake bite deaths in Burma than any place in the
world...mostly from krait bites. And there are mines everywhere and I don't
mean ruby mines. I mean land mines.

It is hard to tell who your friends are and if you are working for our
government it is downright impossible. (Wait. Is that unpatriotic?) One day,
we were ordered to spray some poppies north of a visible line on the
ground...a road or something. But, the poppies to the south looked a lot
better so for grins, I jumped across the line. You should have heard the
uproar! Something about "tests" to prove the efficacy of the oldest phenoxy
herbicide in the world...and the base ingredient in Agent Orange (to which
there is a lot of myth attached). In truth, the stuff we were supposed to
kill was owned by a competitor of the generals that we were working for.
Just a little capitalism in a social world.

So, if you can fly in Burma, do. Just have a little guts because it isn't a
day at the gliderport. It is the last place like it on earth. Enjoy it while
you can.



"Andy Davey" wrote in message
...
Just seen a mention on a website about gliding in Myanmar(formerly
Burma) at a place called Taungbbi.
Anyone got any more info? I'm currently working in
myanmar for 3 months, and it'd be great to get it in
my logbook!

Regards,
Andy