Window on Burma

Given the recent crackdown in Burma (also known as Myanmar) on pro-democracy demonstrators by the ruling dictatorship, travellers may be striking that country off their list of places to visit. The debate on whether tourism helps or hurts the local people has long raged; many blacklisted travelling there long ago because of human-rights abuses by the military junta. Nonetheless, interest remains high about life inside Burma.

Vancouver photographer William Jans visited Burma in 1995, but he makes it clear to the Straight in a phone interview that his travel slide show, Burma Bound, which he'll present on Friday (November 9), was not conceived in response to current events. He says he mounted the show because people who had seen his other productions, such as Solo in South America, asked for one on his travels in Burma and Vietnam. Burma Bound has been a year in the making, and Jans has worked hard to ensure his trademark zany stories don't inadvertently make light of serious matters. "I've done my utmost to be culturally sensitive," he says.

While the show inevitably touches on politics, the focus is his travel experience and interactions with Burmese locals, who he says were some of the friendliest people he's met on the road. "It is from a point in time," he says of his Burma tales. "Hopefully that information might give you an idea of what's slowly trickled up to what's going on now."

Jans's past slide shows have proven to be in a class of their own. To his spectacular images he adds fast-paced video and audio clips of encounters with locals, fantastic storytelling, and an infectious energy and humour. Burma Bound, which also includes his travels in Vietnam, will be shown on at John Oliver secondary school's theatre (530 East 41st Avenue) at 8 p.m. Tickets are $22 at the door. For more information, see www.wrjphoto.com/ .

Murder at the Opus

Writers are told to "write what you know", and that's what Daniel Edward Craig has done with his first novel, Murder at the Universe (Midnight Ink, 2007). The general manager of Vancouver's Opus hotel has set his whodunit in a fictional New York five-star hotel called the Universe. The book opens with the murder of the hotel's manager and centres on the director of rooms, who searches for the culprit while keeping both staff and guests calm. The plot is overly drawn out, and plays on the universe theme can get tiresome (the lounge is called the Centre of the Universe, and the hotel's motto is "Our world revolves around yours," for example). The fun is in speculating on how much of what the characters reveal about the hotel business is actually true.

Rather than read between the lines, peek behind the scenes of the hotel industry with Craig's blog at www.opushotel.com/blog/ . Sure, it's marketing for the Opus, but some entries are surprisingly candid; for example, Craig notes how to complain effectively if you're not happy with your hotel experience. Entries are brief, humorous, and well written–and most importantly, Craig speaks as a traveller himself, not just a GM. In one entry, after giving the official line on why mini bar items are so expensive ("What travellers don't take into account are the costs of labour, spoilage and mysteriously vanishing items"), he admits to being offended himself by mini bar prices when he travels–and eventually succumbing to that damned overpriced Kit Kat.

Links: William Jans
Daniel Edward Craig's blog