Marek Lenarcik Releases New Book on Burma

Yangon, Myanmar

Although its political isolation has ended, Myanmar remains a land of little known cultures and peoples. Those curious to know more about it will enjoy Burma Lost & Found: Three years living my dream job in the travel industry in Rangoon and beyond, author Marek Lenarcik's new book describing diverse experiences as he crosses the country. His journey takes him to fishing villages on the Andaman Sea, landlocked hunting communities and holy mountain peaks.

Along the way he meets locals and expats with stories to tell. In Yangon, he meets Lily, a 16-year-old Kachin refugee who has worked as a bar girl since her father was disappeared by soldiers in the country's longest-running civil war. On the 500-mile train journey to Mandalay, he shares a sleeper car with Mogok, an elderly monk who tells Lenarcik a prophetic fortune. On a remote Andaman island, he encounters Dorothy, an eccentric resort manager with a penchant for scaring visitors to the untamed jungle. These characters and many more fill the pages of a unique travelogue.

Lenarcik traverses the country by trains, planes and automobiles to experience stunning landscapes, ruins of empires, exotic food and unique cultures in search of the best that the nation's budding tour and hospitality industry has to offer. He also faces the workplace challenge of implementing change where little has changed in over forty years.

Lenarcik didn't know idea what adventures awaited him when he landed in Yangon for a brief work assignment in January 2011, just before political reforms ended a decades-old military regime. But a short time later, reeling from a broken heart and facing a dwindling savings account, he landed work as a product manager for one of the country's top travel companies.

Soon Lenarcik realized that this was more than a dream job. As a professional traveler, he was in a unique position to witness the country's unprecedented rise on the international scene. Burma Lost & Found, one of the first travelogues about Burma to be published since the country's reform and opening up, follows this change. Within a couple years, the number of cars, expatriates and construction cranes in Yangon rose exponentially. Tourist arrivals to Burma mounted, too.

As Lenarcik shares his experience of the rapidly modernizing country, he reaches insights that will inform and entertain the armchair traveler, trip planner and expatriate in a way that few volumes can. Compared to the myriad volumes that document neighboring Southeast Asian countries, few contemporary books and fewer travelogues have been published about Burma.

About Marek Lenarcik

Two weeks in Thailand in 2007 changed Marek Lenarcik's life. Fed up with dreary Irish winters, he decided to leave his corporate job and, in 2009, bought a one-way ticket to Asia. Since that time he's worn a variety of hats. He's taught English in a Thai university, hosted outdoor adventures in Malaysia and organized expeditions around Southeast Asia and South America. In 2012, he moved to Yangon, Myanmar, where he currently works in the tourism industry.

Lenarcik holds an M. Phil in International Peace Studies from Trinity College Dublin and a BA in Political Science from the Warsaw School of Social Sciences, Poland. He began writing at age 17 and has since published thousands of articles. His work has appeared in The Washington Times, Playboy, Paranormal Magazine UK and The Times, among others.

His first book Tajski epizod z dreszczykiem (Thai Episode with a Thrill) was published in Poland in June 2012 and quickly became a bestseller in its category. Its English version was published in February 2013 under the title This is Thailand: A Story of Love, Sex and Betrayal in the Tropics.

Read more about Lenarcik and follow his adventures at http://www.lifeinthetropics.org.

To request a review copy of Burma Lost & Found

Please contact Marek Lenarcik at marek(at)lifeinthetropics(dot)org or +95 9250421538 . Interviews are also available upon request. More information about the book is available at http://www.burmalostandfound.com and http://www.facebook/burmalostandfound.

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