When we left for Burma, our friends were shaking their heads uncomprehendingly, our parents were angry, and we had been "officially" labeled "insane". I couldn’t imagine what it would be like in a country where a military junta (now a “government”) was in charge. We were afraid the locals would not be willing to talk to us out of fear that it would cause them problems. In the beginning, they seemed not only very reserved, but sometimes hostile. No warm smiles from ear to ear of the kind we had experienced the year before in Vietnam.