Yangon, March 7:

Visiting Myanmar, one of the most isolated countries in the world, makes Uledev Viadreslav feel like an explorer back in the old days before air travel started making the world feel smaller.

“We can go everywhere without any crowds, and see only locals around us. Here I can feel that I’m an explorer,” Viadreslav said while resting with two friends in a shady corner of Yangon’s spectacular golden Shwedagon Pagoda.

When tourists arrive here on flights from neighbouring Thailand, they set their watches back 30 minutes to adjust to Myanmar’s unique time zone.

But many say they feel they have gone back 30 years, to a time before Asian cities were clogged with traffic and pollution, to a slow-paced town where men still wear traditional longyis instead of trousers, and women and children paint their faces white with sandalwood makeup.

After 45 years of military rule, Myanmar is one of the poorest countries whose rulers have largely sealed it off from the outside world. Motorcycles are banned here, leaving the roads to decades-old Nissan Sunny’s that would have long ago landed in the scrapyards of Myanmar’s better off neighbours.

Myanmar only began allowing tourists to visit in the last 20 years, and movement outside the main cities and temple sites are still restricted. But that’s part of the appeal for travellers like Viadreslav, who have slowly but steadily pumped more and more money into Myanmar’s struggling economy.

Last year, Myanmar’s official statistics showed that the overall number of foreign visitors here dropped by about five per cent to 630,060 people, mainly due to a fall in cross-border traffic.

But airport arrivals by big-spending international tourists were up 16 per cent, so Myanmar’s tourism revenue climbed by nearly eight per cent to $164 million.