As is only to be expected, Myanmar’s ongoing peace process was a prominent topic of debate in both Kunming and Singapore. The headline story was high-level official confirmation of what many have long thought – that not everything is going to be wrapped up ahead of the 2015 general election. Yes, there’s a strong chance a nationwide ceasefire will be negotiated reasonably soon, with a flurry of scheduled meetings in Naypyitaw, Laiza and Yangon suggesting important progress may be registered later this month. Simultaneously political dialogue will open up. But leading figures now accept it will not be possible to settle every contentious issue within the next 15 months. That is significant, because it means a highly personalized process with limited institutional residue will pass from the current constellation of political forces to the new configuration set in place by the election. Hopefully key actors in the new government and parliament will not insist on unpicking all that has been achieved by then, but certainly there will be some disruption.

In the second half of last week, I moved from Kunming to Singapore to attend the International Burma Studies Conference 2014 – “Envisioning Myanmar: Issues, Images, Identities”. It was my first ever BSC, and it was great. Among a reported total of 270 delegates were gathered many big stars, giving even ordinary mortals the chance to get up close and personal with them. Sole gripe – S$300 registration fee, and not even lunch provided at the Pan Pacific. But that’s a comparatively minor issue. I joined forces with Melissa Carlson to organize the panel “Creative Dissent: Art and Politics in Myanmar”. Our landmark achievement was to recruit as paper givers Aung Soe Min, co-owner of Yangon’s Pandosan Gallery, and Pyay Way, owner of Yangon’s Nawaday Tharlar Gallery. More later on particular aspects of the conference.

In the early part of last week I was in Kunming to attend the eighth iteration of an annual academic symposium on Myanmar – “Myanmar in 2014: Re-integrating into International Community”. The host was Professor Li Chenyang, Director of the Center for Myanmar Studies at Yunnan University. The co-organizers were the Charhar Institute, the Faculty of Social Sciences at HKU, and the Department of International Relations at Yangon University. This endeavour was launched in Bangkok on March 2, 2007 – the 45th anniversary of the Ne Win coup. I was the organizer, and Konrad Adenauer Stiftung was the key external funder alongside HKU. We then moved to Xiamen University in 2008, Yunnan University in 2009 and HKU in 2010-13, before returning to Yunnan this year. Every session is governed by the Chatham House rule, so I have little to report. But I can say two things. One is that the tripartite mix of Myanmar, China and international scholars and practitioners, not yet visible in 2007 but ever more clear in each succeeding year, is proving to be constructive and stimulating. The other is that, having danced around East Asia for nearly a decade, we have an excellent chance of actually moving inside Myanmar next year. The aim in 2015 is to convene at the University of Yangon.

With Martin and Daniel from EPP, plus their British colleague Ewan Cameron, I took a quick trip to Naypyitaw’s Uppatasanti Pagoda. Known to be modeled on Yangon’s Shwedagon Pagoda, and intentionally to stand 30 cm shorter, it naturally invites comparison with its illustrious counterpart – and can only come off badly. Viewed on its merits, however, it fares better. This is an impressive addition to Myanmar’s huge inventory of Buddhist temples.

Entering as we did from the southeast, you quickly encounter a towering record of inscription. One thing you immediately notice is the regal tone. Dating from February 21, 2009 in the Gregorian calendar, and from the 12th waning of Tapodwe, 1370 in the Myanmar calendar, the opening words are “Royal City of Nay Pyi Taw”. I haven’t been able to track down the reference, but I recall that in the mid-2000s Robert H Taylor published an article pooh-poohing swirling criticism of Than Shwe for his choice of name for Myanmar’s new capital. Adopting an entirely familiar stance, Taylor insisted that the title given to the city had no more regal connotation than did the name of Nay Pyi Taw cinema opposite Traders Hotel in Yangon. Well, this inscription appears to prove him wrong about that.

The pagoda is vast, monolithic, sterile, intimidating and empty apparently at all times other than full moon days. Equally, though, it cannot be dismissed. From the platform, there are wonderful views both of the temple itself and of surrounding countryside reaching off to the Shan hills in the east, and the Kayin hills in the southeast. Inside, the temple presents an enormous, even stunning, volume of gilded and marbled space. In no sense does it rival the outstanding Hassan II Mosque in Casablanca, Morocco, but in many respects it is a building of that aura and magnitude.

Uppatasanti Pagoda is worth a visit – not only because there’s little else to see in Naypyitaw, but also because of its intrinsic quality.

In two days, both quite busy, I scarcely got to visit any Naypyitaw neighbourhoods – or zones (ministry, military, residential, hotel, etc) as they’re officially known. But I did travel about a bit and feel I’d like to note down some of what I saw, as much for the record as anything else.

Less than 10 years old, this is still visibly a city very nearly dropped from the sky onto an unsuspecting landscape. There’s nothing organic about it, and many features seem designed actually to boost the sense of unreality – the vast empty boulevards, the neatly painted kerbs, the immaculate landscaping, the plastic flowers adorning many roundabouts. None of it bears any connection to the immediate context, and all of it breaks down the minute you leave, or even look away from, the impressive infrastructure built in the early 2000s. One minute an eight-lane highway, the next a dirt track leading to the back streets of Pyinmana. Presumably other new capitals started life like this, and only slowly managed to graft themselves onto their surroundings.

One evening I took a very brief drive around the compound used to house the bulk of Myanmar’s opposition MPs – elected members from the USDP and appointed members from the military have their own segregated spaces. This civilian compound in fact has two parts – number one for guests, number two for legislators. Both contain single-storey buildings that could readily pass for barracks facing off across open scrubland. In the MPs’ section, standard prices of roughly $12 a night for a three-bed room are discounted to about $3, meaning that legislators prepared to share can stay in Naypyitaw for around $1 a night. An important recent concession is that valuables can now be locked in rooms when MPs return to their constituencies.

The final evening I was back at the airport – sleek, modern, sparkling, cavernous, decked out almost entirely in English-language signage. Reflecting the city it serves, it was as close to vacant as any still-functioning facility is ever likely to be. According to the departure board, there was that night a single international flight (with, it turned out, some 35 passengers) – PG722 to Bangkok at 20:05. I’m pretty certain there were no domestic flights. Sitting in an eerily isolated hall pondering the door marked “Smoker’s room”, I came to believe the apostrophe was not misplaced after all.

Last week I was in Naypyitaw only very briefly, and for just the second time – but even a limited acquaintance is bound to stimulate thought. What, then, to make of a city that in December 2013 hosted the 27th Southeast Asian Games, in 2014 is the venue for a wealth of international meetings under Myanmar’s ASEAN chairmanship, and in November 2015 will celebrate 10 years as national administrative capital?

The expert is ANU’s Nicholas Farrelly, who for the first half of this year was based in Naypyitaw. He’s already writing and talking about the city – and from private conversation I know how stimulating is his analysis. I can’t find much on the web, and as far as I can tell he hasn’t yet posted anything substantial at New Mandala. Still, hints of his current thinking are out there. The title of a June 2014 talk gives one indication: “Naypyitaw: exemplifying transition in Myanmar”. An April 2014 news story provides another: “‘In my estimation, the future of Nay Pyi Taw is the future of Myanmar,’ Farrelly said during a presentation on the new capital at the East-West Center in Washington, D.C., in September 2013. ‘If we want to get to grips in the years ahead of what Myanmar will turn into, then we need to understand Nay Pyi Taw and all it will come to represent.'”

Those assessments look exactly right. We know from Wikipedia that Naypyitaw is already the third largest city in Myanmar, with a 2012 population of 1,164,299. We learn from CNN that in 2011 it was one of the 10 fastest-growing cities in the world. From the moment of arrival at a glittering, if empty, international airport that would not disgrace, say, a mid-sized European or North American hub, it’s abundantly clear that this place is destined to lead the nation for many years to come.

On Nich’s evaluation that Naypyitaw exemplifies transition in Myanmar. Above all, the city demonstrates that Than Shwe really did mastermind contemporary national development. He created a new capital with by far the best infrastructure in the country. There’s no going back on the switch from Yangon made in 2005. He also oversaw the creation of discipline-flourishing democracy. For the foreseeable future, it seems likely there will be no major deviation from that either.

In the middle of last week I was talking in Naypyitaw with MPs and parliamentary officials about problems of humanitarian intervention above all in Rakhine State. My trip was arranged by Martin Tuang and Bwe Doe Aye (Daniel) from Myanmar Scholarship Alumni Association’s Empowerment Program for Parliamentarians. I was impressed by the work EPP is doing in Office 20, a large building down the road from the looming parliamentary complex.

A prime mover in establishing EPP roughly 18 months ago was opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi. The initiative also has full support from Lower House Speaker Shwe Mann. Funding comes mainly from OSF. The focus is on teaching English to elected members and appointed officials of both houses of parliament. Initially the expectation was that 30 MPs and 30 administrators would register. In fact, despite losing some class members chiefly to time constraints, the number of enrolled MPs is currently 40-50, and the number of enrolled officials is 130-140. As Myanmar reclaims full membership of international society, all acknowledge English as a necessary skill.

Further empowerment takes place through links with overseas training institutes. At present, two parliamentary officials (and a bigger cohort from government departments) are studying for six months at a partner institute in New Zealand, and four legislative officials (again with colleagues from the executive) are studying for three months at an institute in India. Often it’s minor change of this kind that brings home the reality of reform in Myanmar.

Excellent news at the end of last week that MSF-Holland is being allowed to resume aid operations in Rakhine State. Unexpected, too, since the fierce drumbeat of grassroots public opinion ever since activities were suspended in late February has been not on any account to let that happen. Matters of detail still need to be worked out, but this is undeniably a positive step. As UNOCHA official Pierre Peron notes, MSF’s absence from Rakhine has had “a major humanitarian impact”. Most serious has been the inability of any other organization to process its caseload of roughly 400 patient referrals per month.

The Irrawaddy reports that the relevant Ministry of Health statement, carried in government media on Thursday, held that assistance from international organizations would contribute to local stability and development. A parallel announcement from Rakhine State authorities affirmed that “our government would like to invite all organizations, as well as other UN agencies and including MSF, to participate in implementing the Rakhine Action Plan”. A June 27 meeting at Myanmar Peace Centre (in fact at the Centre for Diversity and Social Harmony within the MPC compound) was instrumental in securing agreement from key stakeholders.

At last week’s press conference, covered by the BBC, President’s Office Minister Soe Thein said that MSF “was especially welcome” to work in Rakhine, and added what was clearly intended to be a conciliatory remark: “As human beings we all commit errors and the errors usually lie on both sides.” By the early months of this year, MSF’s Rakhine programme was problematic for several reasons. Its memorandum of understanding with the Union government had expired a year previously, and it was operating on the basis of a verbal agreement with the MoH. Although the lapsed MoU authorized 19 foreigners to work in Rakhine, far larger numbers were actually present – always 200, and sometimes up to 500. Most entered the country on tourist visas and proceeded to work in clinics. While such informal arrangements are standard MSF practice in many failed states around the world, they are not appropriate for long-term engagement with Myanmar.

Going forward, progress will depend largely on issues of governance. Throughout the current crisis there have been divisions between the Union government and Rakhine State officials, between both tiers and Rakhine civil society, and within Rakhine civil society itself. Tellingly, the agreement reached at MPC was repudiated by members of Rakhine Social Network as soon as it filtered out. When asked last week about MSF’s return, Sittwe town elder Than Tun, who participated in the MPC meeting, also struck a cautionary note: “We find it difficult to trust them.” Certainly national authorities are becoming more assertive, notably through Thein Sein’s appointment, again at the end of June, of a new chief minister for Rakhine. To signal a more decisive course, Major General Maung Maung Ohn was asked to take over from Hla Maung Tin. Nevertheless, it remains an open question whether the fresh approach will succeed in winning over, or at least neutralizing, local hostility.

There was a strange sentence in one of the Irrawaddy articles: “Some aid workers fret that the announcement has more to do with politics than resolving the humanitarian crisis.” The explanation was that UN Special Rapporteur Yanghee Lee was in Myanmar last week, that US Secretary of State John Kerry may visit next month, and that US President Barack Obama is expected later in the year. Indeed – but in Rakhine State, as elsewhere, it’s impossible to isolate humanitarian action fully from politics.

It’s not quite a MOOC. Nevertheless, the University of Oxford’s Institute of New Economic Thinking is putting together a course on foundations of economics to be taught across five campuses starting from September. What makes it MOOC-like is that students from universities in countries as far apart as Brazil, India and the UK will study in parallel, and will have common access to a wide array of dedicated online resources. In Myanmar, one or two faculty members from Yangon’s Institute of Economics (and possibly also the economics department at Mandalay University) will be trained to teach the course, thereby enabling UY and MU undergraduates to take it alongside their global peers from December onwards.

Ba Win, from Bard College in upstate New York, delivered a neat speech to a plenary session of last week’s Social Science Curriculum Working Group Meeting. I particularly liked the description he gave of a young Burmese student travelling to the US, as he did in 1965, and being required to think independently. It reminded me of a passage in Pascal Khoo Thwe’s brilliant memoir, From the Land of Green Ghosts: A Burmese Odyssey. Transposed from Burma to Thailand and then to Cambridge in 1991, the author confronted many difficulties. Above all, he faced Ba Win’s challenge. This is how he puts it (p.275):

“The hardest thing, though, was the very idea of forming my own opinion. In my first term I was reading Renaissance English literature, including Spenser, Milton and Donne. Not only was I expected to master these texts – difficult for me both in their language and in their historical and religious background – but I had also to come to a personal point of view on them. Nothing could have been more opposed to the whole pattern of my previous education, and the thought of writing essays on my own was as frightening to me as the experience of defusing a landmine.”

Fortunately for future generations of elite Myanmar students, help is at hand. Bard’s Language and Thinking Program, an intensive three-week pre-collegiate programme created in 1981, will be brought to UY and MU in time for the December 2014 cohorts. The intention is to make this a standard part of student induction on both campuses. Focused on writing across a wide range of genres, it embodies an approach Ba Win termed thinking by writing. In the long run, this could be one of the most important university reforms made in contemporary Myanmar.