02/11/2022
In 41st spot is Myanmar (formally Burma) 🇲🇲
Myanmar (formerly Burma) is a Southeast Asian nation of more than 100 ethnic groups, bordering India, Bangladesh, China, Laos and Thailand. Yangon (formerly Rangoon), the country's largest city, is home to bustling markets, numerous parks and lakes, and the towering, gilded Shwedagon Pagoda, which contains Buddhist relics and dates to the 6th century.
FACTS
🔴 1 FESTIVALS – Thingyan, the Burmese New Year Water Festival, is the most popular, and raucous of Burma’s colourful celebrations. Calculated by the lunar calendar, it usually falls around April and lasts for five days. On the first day, people around the country gather together, visit pagodas, make offerings and pay homage to the monks, play traditional games and celebrate in joyful spirits! On the second day, the water throwing which marks the festival begins in earnest. Revellers use receptacles of all shapes and sizes to douse each other to symbolise the cleansing of the sins of the year.
🔴 2 NATURE – Burma boasts a wide range of fish and mammals but is probably best known for its elephants, manatees, wild buffalo, tigers and leopards. Over 800 species of birds make it an ornithologist’s paradise.
🔴 3 LANDSCAPE – Burma’s landscape is rich and varied. It is a country of mountains: the Himalayas, the Hengduan Mountains, the Rakhine Yoma, the Bago Yoma, the Shan Hills and the Tenasserim Hills. Between the densely-forested mountain ranges, the country’s winding rivers – the Irrawaddy, the Salween and the Sittaung – flow through fertile valleys. Burma also has glorious beaches, having 1,930 km of contiguous coastline along the Bay of Bengal and the Andaman Sea.
🔴 4 ICONIC STRUCTURE – The extraordinary Shwedagon Pagoda towers over Yangon’s skyline at 110 metres high. Built 2,500 years ago to enshrine Buddha’s hair and other holy relics, the complex now consists of hundreds of temples, stupas and statues. The main pagoda is covered with hundreds of gold leaves and the top of the stupa is encrusted with 4531 diamonds; the largest of which is a 72 carat diamond!
🔴 5 HISTORY – Myanmar was colonised by the British in 1824 and remained under their rule until the Second World War, when Japan invaded and it became a major battleground. Burma achieved independence in 1948.