YANGON, Myanmar — At the Savoy Hotel in Yangon, Burmese writer and scholar Thant Myint-U told a group of journalists that, “It’s probably not incorrect to say that we are at the most important historical watershed for this country at least since 1962, perhaps since independence in 1948.”

At a conference hosted by GlobalPost and Open Hands Initiative, the Harvard University professor noted that the nation would have to make difficult choices, and would have to undergo much more change in order to successfully acclimate to the 21st century.

YANGON, Myanmar — Myo Kyaw Aung had just started boiling the water for coffee when he mentioned the accident.

It was the middle of the night and he and his wife May Thu were fast asleep. Their four-year-old daughter quietly fell out the back of their one-room hut, slowly drowning in a pool of standing water just feet from where her parents lay.

YANGON, Myanmar — As twenty young journalists gathered Wednesday for the introductory session of a three-week reporting fellowship based in Yangon, the event’s very existence was something of a marvel.

That’s because freedom of the press is a very recent development in Burma, part of a series of reforms initiated by President Thein Sein during the past two years after decades of Orwellian censorship and violent repression.

YANGON, Myanmar — Ja Nan Lahtaw, assistant director of the Nyein Foundation, an NGO actively involved in peace-building processes with ethnic groups in Myanmar said Wednesday she had “cautious optimism” about the prospects of the country’s ongoing peace talks.

“I think the president and his negotiation team really want to bring about peace…they have good intentions,” Ja Nan Lahtaw told a group of journalists, referring to President Thein Sein. “But the process is the problem.”