REDUCED SAILINGS FOR 2008/2009 SEASON

Please see letter below from the Management of Pandaw Cruises:

Many people have been asking what the position of our Burma cruises for the coming 08-09 season.

Two weeks ago I visited both Pagan and Mandalay and life in these centres goes on normally. Nothing that our passengers see or do would be in any way affected by the cyclone and even Rangoon is back to normal with all services up and running.

We do believe that we should continue operations to keep our team in work and help the domestic economy as much as possible. Note we work only with private suppliers and contractors. We also we believe we should not neglect our programme of school building up river. Last trip I visited two villages in the forgotten Thiri Kyun (island) both in dire need of schools. These works should continue in addition to the not insignificant assistance our passengers have rendered to the cyclone victims.

Despite this, we are not expecting many new bookings for the season ahead. We have reduced the number of sailings, particularly in view of the now astronomic fuel cost in Burma. We have cancelled the Road to Mandalay cruise in August and certain Golden Land Cruises in Jan-March.

We will continue to operate our Chindwin and Upper Irrawaddy cruises, which are mainly full. There have been few cancellations for these special expedition cruises, thanks to our stalwart passengers

For the short cruises between Pagan and Mandalay we will operate a reduced service of two sailings a week and are currently reworking the schedule.

Many thanks to the many people who have written to us in response to our Cyclone Appeal. Thanks also for the many often lively comments on my blog from Burma. I am sorry I could not reply personally as there has been well over a 1,000 incoming emails. Over the past weeks our reservations team were kept very busy handling the volume of correspondence.

I will keep the blog going with regular reports on what the Pandaw Team are doing to help and how we are spending your very generous donations. We will shortly post a new page which gives a breakdown of income and expenditure by category in ‘real time’ from our Rangoon office.

Thanks again from all the Pandaw Team for your support.

Paul Strachan
www.pandaw.com