Travel: Myanmar - The road to Mandalay

MYANMAR is all about courage. That of its people today and of those for fought there in the past in the name of democracy

Myanmar used to be Burma. Yangon used to be Rangoon. Mandalay used to be the capital of Burma until the British changed it to Rangoon. Yangon/Rangoon used to be the capital of Myanmar, but the new capital is Naypyidaw.

The country also used to be a British colony – George Orwell served here and wrote about it in Burmese Days. It also used to be prosperous – the most prosperous country in South East Asia, thanks to exports of rice, rubber and teak, its rich natural resources, oil, gas, rubies, sapphires, gold, and its highly educated people. And, the most important "used to be": Burma used to be a democracy.

The British are welcomed in Myanmar because most people no longer associate Britain with colonialism. But should you go? The house arrest of Aung San Suu Kyi is the outward reminder to the world that all is not well with Myanmar, but there now appears to be some dialogue between her and the government. There are elections promised in the autumn, although there are serious doubts whether they will be free and fair, and Suu Kyi is said to have changed her stance on tourism, which benefits local people.

So what is it like in Burma? It is South East Asia 50 years ago; Orwell would recognise it. We had travelled from the modern comforts of the Sukhothai hotel in the Thai capital, Bangkok (though with the current unrest in Thailand, that option isn't currently open to travellers) to reach The Governor's Residence, Yangon. It is an Orient-Express hotel, so also very luxurious yet utterly different. In the embassy quarter of Yangon, it gives a beguiling glimpse of how life was lived by the Burmese elite when the provincial head held court there. A handsome teak building with swooping roofs, cool, high rooms, balconies and courtyards, gardens and pools, it allowed us to adjust to the pace of Burmese life, but a westerner can never perfect the graceful glide with which Burmese women move, nor the purposeful strut of the Burmese male.

From here we had a conducted tour of Yangon that took in the Shwedagon pagoda, a fabulous golden edifice and the holiest shrine in Burma, the Scott market, and other colonial buildings, parks and lakes. What we also saw were abandoned government offices (because the regime moved to its newly built capital in 2005), uneven, broken pavements, potholed streets, and we heard tales of the intermittent electricity supply (although the government is careful to maintain the supply in the embassy quarter). Such inward investment as there is comes from China, France and other countries unconcerned with sanctions.

We then flew to Mandalay and joined the Road To Mandalay river boat on the Ayeyarwady (Irrawaddy) River. Also Orient-Express owned, and quite the most luxurious river boat I have ever cruised on, it took us down river to Bagan and revealed other faces of Burma. We had travelled two years ago on the Yangtze in China, a river that is the definition of busy, with huge volumes of water traffic at all times of day and night. Here, on this muddy brown water, there was almost nothing to be seen.

What we did see were village women coming down to the river to wash clothes by beating them on stones, little boys being transported in great style in bullock carts to their first experience of life as a Buddhist monk (all Burmese men spend two periods in their lives as monks, and the shaven heads and saffron robes are common sights), and homes and businesses in which the 21st century does not appear to have made any impact. Access to the internet is not available and mobile phones don't work here.

The poverty of the surroundings was depressing, but what was not were the grace and gentleness of the Burmese people. A racial stereotype? Yes, but in fact an accurate one.

Our guide was San, a man of great patience and good humour, who entertained us with stories as he took us through the grounds of the Royal Palace – the "glass palace" of the book by Amitav Ghosh – escorted us around some of the best of the more than 2,200 stupas (domed monuments) in the great parched plain that is Bagan (which used to be called Pagan) and showed us gold beaters, marble Buddha carvers, took us into markets, and explained that the flickering fairground lights around some of the Buddhas' heads were a recent innovation, although totally at odds with the beauty of the surroundings. More Disney than Disney.

At times we felt templed out, but then we remembered our reason for coming to Burma – to reconnect with a bit of family history.

You could say that Stanley, known as Stan, gave us an introduction to this land where we journeyed luxuriously and were welcomed like long lost friends. Stan was my father-in-law, and his Burma involved jungle warfare south of Mandalay during the Second World War.

Just 20 years old when he arrived from England, the heat, the humidity, the bugs and the Japanese were all his enemies.

He got severe shrapnel wounds in his legs but made it back to base, and was taken to Mandalay where he was patched up then sent back to the front line. Wounded again, he was sent to India to recuperate, then back again to Burma. In 1944, he was awarded a Military Medal for rescuing fellow soldiers under fire. In later life, as a consequence of his war service, he suffered leg pains and restricted mobility, not to mention recurring malaria.

Stan never spoke about his experience until he was refused a war pension and I became involved in his fight. A medical was then arranged, and the young female doctor was as amazed as I was at his story, and that he had survived, and we won, eventually, just as Stan and his friends had won.

Unfortunately, he did not collect his war pension for long. And now my husband and I were looking at the river and the countryside that his father had seen. As an experience, it was so strange, so utterly foreign and – because the country has not moved on since the early 1960s – a real journey back in time.

Burma for me was about courage. Stan's brand of courage, and the courage of its people today. We sat on the deck of Road To Mandalay and raised a glass to every Stan who fought here in defence of freedom and democracy, and to the many who did not return. And raised a glass again to the people of Burma: so delightful, and so deserving of peace and freedom.

Myanmar used to be Burma, and used to be repressed, and now is free. That would be a very good thing to be able to write, and soon.

Fact File:

A five-night journey within Burma operated by Orient-Express starts from 1,960 per person. For reservations or further information, tel: [phone] or see www.orient-express.com. International flights are extra, but may be arranged through Orient-Express.

• This article was first published in Scotland on Sunday on 23 May.