Author Clare Hammond reveals how railways made and broke Myanmar

Author Clare Hammond travels south from Kachin State towards Mandalay, Myanmar, in November 2017. - Libby Burke Wilde via AP

BANGKOK: For three months in 2016, a British journalist working in Myanmar travelled across the South-East Asian country on trains with a mission to find out where they led, who built them, and why.

Clare Hammond arrived in Myanmar during a period of hope amid a transition to civilian rule, as Aung San Suu Kyi was coming to power after her decades of struggle against military rule.