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The article offers information on miscellaneous topics including the festival held at the pagoda Shwemyitzu on the lake, tourism of the country, and risk associated with the environment of the country due to the lake.

IN March, Justin Mott photographed the temples and pagodas in and around Bagan, Myanmar, just as deeply flawed elections in that country led to a new president and the possible easing of travel restrictions. Myanmar has been under military rule in one form or another since 1962, but since the elections, tourists have begun to trickle in, eager to be among the first few to explore the country as it opens. ''The country is a traveler's paradise with all the treasures of Southeast Asia but without all the tourists,'' Mr. Mott wrote. ''For the early riser, novice monks with their saffron robes are there to see, in perfect composition for a photographer. Wherever you go you will rarely have a smile unreturned. It's easy to forget that the country's beloved Nobel Peace Prize recipient Daw Aung San Suu Kyi was under house arrest for the better part of the past two decades before her release in November.'' See more of Justin Mott's photographs at nytimes.com/travel. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

It cannot have pleased Myanmar's ruling family: the collapse of a 2,300-year-old gold-domed pagoda into a pile of timbers just three weeks after the wife of the junta's top general helped rededicate it. There is no country in Asia more superstitious than Myanmar, and the crumbling of the temple was seen widely as something more portentous than shoddy construction work. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]