Asia Ports

I am glad Christopher Reynolds had an enjoyable time on his Song of Flower cruise from Rangoon to Singapore (“Asia Ports, the Luxe Way,” Feb. 11). I took the same trip one year ago, and my experience was quite different.

My cruise was just after the merger between Radisson and Seven Seas. While the ports were fascinating, the service aboard ship was chaotic and disorganized. The dining room was severely understaffed, so even a simple dinner dragged out to an excruciating 2 1/2 hours.

One night, too ill to make it to the dining room, I requested room service, only to be offered soup and a sandwich. This, on a five-star ship? Every other ship I have sailed on (this was my 13th cruise) has served the full menu in one’s cabin. Needless to say, my first cruise on Song of Flower was also my last.

BELINDA E. BULLOCK

Pasadena

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To call Burma’s State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC) “repressive” is an understatement. Travel articles about Burma ought to focus on published reports that thousands of Burma’s citizens have been conscripted into forced labor to build tourist sites.

“Visit Myanmar Year 1996” is the junta’s answer to a public relations problem created when it massacred thousands of pro-democracy demonstrators in 1988. Today, tourists may be discomforted to learn that SLORC agents may follow them, or that Burmese people with whom they converse may later be interrogated, or that the International Red Cross has found it impossible to operate in Burma. Luxury ships such as Radisson’s “Song of Flower” pay large docking fees to the SLORC, which is conducting a terror campaign against Burma’s ethnic groups to gain land, resources and free labor.

SLORC hasn’t changed since 1988. People considering spending money in Burma in 1996 should heed the words of Nobel Peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi and “jolly well wait.”

DAVID WOLFBERG, director

L.A. Campaign for a Free Burma