Summary Beginning of the journey in Rangoon: since 2011 Burma is opened to the tourists.Raphael meets Thurein Aung , an architect who works for the restoration old buildings.They visit the Shwedagon Pagoda, a site with a great stupa (98 meters high) and 72 other pagodas.Raphael meets also Jochen Meissner who organizes bike tours through several unknown parts of Rangoon.We see also a family of puppeteers who try to preserve this Burmese art.At the Shwedagon Temple there is a weaving competition.Next day Raphael goes to Taunggyi to see the Lightning festival: in the day people send hot air balloons in form of animals and in the night they send hot air balloon with paper lanterns.In the markets and others places Raphael notices that women use white powder on their faces, it's tanaka.Later Raphael meets Phyu Phyu Kyaw Thein, a 34 years old pop star.Then Raphael travels to Lake Inle: he meets a canoe builder, , a woman who harvests tomatoes on floating gardens and sees also the fishermen on the lake.In the same place Raphael meets young Buddhist monks who receive their food from the people. At Kalaw Raphael visits the Green Hill Valley Camp for elephants which enjoy there their retirement.Then Raphael goes to Bagan: on an hot air balloon he can the hundreds of pagodas from above, later he meets Charles-David Hay who shows him some less touristic pagodas and a workshop of lacquered objects at the Minkaba village.Besides we see a zoom about a woman buying gold in Mandalay ,she goes to a workshop where they transform the gold into strips and later in another workshop they transform the strips into gold leaves.In the Mahamuni Temple the people decorate the Buddha statue with these gold leaves.

• Documentary
• Travel Documentary