Burma with Simon Reeve - Season 1

Simon begins his journey in the biggest city in the country, Yangon, and drives north into Buddhist heartlands and the stunning ancient capital of Bagan. He meets the monks who supported the people through the darkest days of dictatorship, and he is granted an audience with ultranationalist monks preaching hate against the country's Muslim Rohingya. Later, Simon travels to Bangladesh to meet the refugees traumatised by the violence and learn about a crisis that has been brewing for decades, with no sign of ending.

In the second episode, Simon journeys up the Irrawaddy River to the old royal capital of Mandalay, home to an exotic market for precious jade. In Burma's mountainous highlands, he experiences the country's vibrant ethnic heritage at an extraordinary fire balloon festival, then visits an elephant sanctuary and finds out how a growing tourism industry is helping them survive after working for decades in the logging industry. Burma is a melting pot of different ethnic groups, and having seen first-hand the suffering of the Rohingya people on the first leg of his journey, Simon now travels secretly into one of Burma's many other conflict zones to meet a huge rebel army who have been fighting the Burmese military for decades. Simon goes on combat patrol into the jungle with the rebels and learns why they have been fighting the longest-running civil war in the world.