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You can go to any market anywhere in the world and get an immediate sense of who the people are. And it's never hard to find the local market. This woman sells an herb that JoJo swore was a dead ringer for arugula.

Shan State is big, beautiful and fertile. It's home to the Shan people and it's the bread basket of Burma. Things have been restless in the state in recent decades for the usual political reasons but as a tourist one never feels these tensions.

Instead we see signs in English that read: "Warmly Welcome and Take Care of Tourists" -- as if these inherently hospitable people would need that reminder.