The ongoing air strikes lobbed by Myanmar's military at resistance forces along the Chinese border is drawing predictable condemnation.

The U.S. State Department calls the attacks on the largely Christian guerrilla fighters -- the Kachin Independence Army -- "extremely troubling," the New York Times reports. Ban Ki-Moon, the United Nations head honcho, has also urged the military to cease the conflict, according to Reuters.

But how is the conflict playing out in the government-aligned press?

Look no further than the New Light of Myanmar, an often-mocked source of government propaganda that, in recent years, blasted Western media for its "killer broadcasts" and "sowing hatred."

From yesterday's edition, we learn that the Kachin guerrillas "sabotaged railroads and motor roads" all while "extorting money" from a local ethnic group and "planting land mines near villages ... to generate misunderstanding" between villagers and the government.

On January 6, New Light readers were told the guerrillas "blasted trucks, abducted local women, sabotaged railroad and bridges and planted mines in urban area."

And in the New Year's Day issue, the government alleges that the Kachin soldiers "committed 101 mine attacks in Kachin State" since late May, 2011.

Is any of it remotely true?

We first must consider that totally independent, on-the-ground reporting out of Myanmar's conflict zones is notoriously hard to come by. Typically, the only witnesses to these conflicts are the combatants themselves and nearby villagers. Among Western media outlets, writing negative copy about guerrilla resistance factions -- which often defend villagers from army abuses and land grabs -- is uncommon and taboo.

But given the government's long track record of abuse -- and the New Light of Myanmar's penchant for pro-state hyperbole -- these stories of sabotage and abduction can't be afforded the benefit of the doubt.

Cambodia's latest approved mega-project is a doozy: an $11.2 billion China-funded endeavor to build a steel mine in the country's north linked to a coastal port via 250 miles of railway tracks.

It's difficult to overemphasize this project's scale, which amounts in dollar figures to nearly 90 percent of the country's current annual GDP. As an Asian Development Bank official tells Reuters, it "must be the largest-ever project in Cambodia."

Cambodians and the world at large have reason to wonder about the project's impact: building a 250-mile railway is likely to trigger home evictions, which have a reputation for violence and abuse in Cambodia. The government also acknowledges that they haven't completed an assessment of the mine's potential environmental damage.

The entire project is surrounded with questions. You might assume that Iv Tek -- Cambodia's transport minister, who presided over the deal's preliminary approval -- would be the man with the answers.

But when the small-but-aggressive Cambodia Daily newspaper confronted the minister with questions, they found that "he did not know a great deal about the project."

“I don’t know what the companies will do," he told the newspaper. "Let’s wait and see all together."

Is he really that clueless? Is he playing dumb to ward off tough questions? Either way, these are not so comforting words from an official holding the reigns of a project that will drastically shape lives and Cambodia's already ailing environment.

Focusing on the long toil for big-issue freedoms in Myanmar -- free elections or freedom from land-grabbing army battalions -- can sometimes overshadow the small pleasures that were forbidden by the former military regime.

Like getting tipsy and joining thousands of compatriates in a New Year's countdown.

But last night, at Yangon's resplendent Shwedagon Pagoda, the citizens were allowed to do just that, the Associated Press reports. One organizer told news outlet The Irrawaddy that roughly 50,000 were expected to turn out. (GlobalPost has posted a slideshow of the gala.)

Large and uncontrollable gatherings on this scale have long been prohibited in Myanmar, an authoritarian nation on the mend.

This giant New Year's bash, standard fare in most countries, is just one of many signs that the nation is swinging towards normalcy. Still, given Myanmar's odd time zone, which is 30 minutes off from its neighbors, the nation was largely alone in celebrating at the stroke of midnight. Only Australia's remote Cocos Islands -- population 600 -- share the same time zone.

It's impossible to neatly sum up Myanmar's 2012, a year that saw draconian laws relaxed and U.S. President Barack Obama's historic visit along with intense ethnic violence both in the mountains along China's border and the tropical coast. This year may prove whether Myanmar's reform movement is really powerful enough to tame the nation's worst abuses.

But here's to a less bloody and more free Myanmar in 2013.

Want to travel across Myanmar, the poor, isolated nation that's becoming a tourism hot spot practically overnight?

You're probably going to end up boarding an aging airplane regulated by a government with dubious credibility.

The Christmas day crash landing of a plane in Myanmar's eastern Shan State -- home of idyllic holiday destination Inle Lake -- could potentially tame the nation's tourism boom. As the Associated Press reports, two of the passengers were killed and American, French and Taiwanese travelers were hurt.

As with many aircraft in the nation's commercial fleet, the plane that crashed was quite old. According to the Aviation Safety Report database, the now-destroyed Bagan Air plane, a Fokker 100, first flew in 1991 and spent years operating under a British carrier. Just four years ago, another Bagan Air commercial flight suffered an aborted takeoff that broke its fuselage in two. (That said, I've flown Air Bagan twice and the service was quite pleasant.)

But Air Bagan isn't the only airline with a dubious record. Myanmar Airways, another major domestic carrier, is so worrisome that the United Kingdom urges its staff to avoid the airline altogether.

Compounding the problem is that, in Myanmar, air travel is often the only way to go. Your other options are creaky British colonial-era trains that can take 20 hours to traverse the distance a plane can cover in one hour.

Or buses bumping along potted roads through countryside where modern hospitals have yet to arrive. Depending on the destination, these overland routes sometimes pass through conflict regions where foreigners are often forbidden to travel.

This is unlikely to scare off the small set of adventure-seeking tourists who've been zipping in and out of Myanmar for quite some time. But I suspect the Dec. 25 crash will give pause to more cautious travelers seeking a whimsical holiday in Myanmar.