BANGKOK -- Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi stole the show at a regional economic forum here in Bangkok Friday.

It's the first time she's traveled abroad in almost a quarter of a century, and her audience, the good and the great of Asia's business and political world, were hanging on her every word.

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"We just want to improve the state of Burma," she said in a speech to the World Economic Forum on East Asia.  "That's what we mean when we say reform."

Her speech was in many ways a reality check, warning against what she called "reckless optimism" over the rapid reforms taking place in Myanmar, also known as Burma. 

The Oxford-educated daughter of Myanmar's slain independence leader added:

"I would not like you to be over-optimistic. I think optimism is good, but cautious optimism. These days I am coming across a lot of what I would call reckless optimism. That is not going to help you. It's not going to help us. So we need a balanced report. A little bit of healthy skepticism I think is in order." 

In Bangkok, she's been given a hero's welcome by Myanmar migrants -- who call her Mother Suu.  More than two million live in Thailand -- workers, refugees and exiles who've escaped the poverty and repression back home, and for whom she had a message of hope -- that conditions would soon be right for them to return.

Even when she wasn't in detention, Suu Kyi, 66, had not left Myanmar since 1988, fearing the ruling generals wouldn't let her back in -- even when her husband was dying in the U.K.

Myanmar's president, who kicked off the reforms by releasing Suu Kyi from house arrest and allowing her to run for parliament, was also invited to this forum, but decided to stay at home --- fearing he's be upstaged.

Suu Kyi receives ecstatic Thailand welcome

Still, the fact Suu Kyi has decided to leave for this visit -- with more planned to Europe -- is in itself a vote of confidence in the reforms.

In Dublin, she'll share a stage with U2 frontman Bono, a staunch Suu Kyi supporter, at a concert in her honor, according to Irish media. In England, she has been given the rare honor of addressing both houses of Parliament. France's Foreign Ministry says she also plans to stop in Paris.

And in Norway she'll deal with some unfinished business -- picking up her 1991 Nobel Peace Prize.

Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report. 

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MAHACHAI, Thailand – They packed onto the steps of a local shrimp market straining for a glimpse of the woman they call “Mother Suu.” Some stood precariously on top of piles of shrimp baskets, waving photographs of Myanmar's opposition leader.

Her arrival was announced by the flashing lights and wailing sirens of her police escort. As her car entered the narrow lanes around the market it was mobbed by photographers and ecstatic supporters, soon slowing to a crawl. 

Others crowded onto rooftops and balconies of the surrounding, rundown buildings, which were mostly migrant workers' dormitories.

This was the beginning of Aung San Suu Kyi's first full day in Thailand, her first overseas trip in 24 years.  And she had chosen to visit Mahachai, south of Bangkok, which has the largest population of Myanmar migrant workers in Thailand.

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Here they mostly work in fisheries, but across Thailand, Myanmar migrant workers – some 2 to 3 million of them, legal and illegal – dominate the low-paid dirty jobs that Thais prefer not to do.

Together with a large refugee and exile community, they are a symbol of the impoverishment and repression of their homeland. 

Message: hope
Thousands turned out to see Suu Kyi today, and she offered them hope. 

"Don't feel down or weak. History is always changing," she said in a brief speech from a balcony during a second stop.  Several people we spoke to said they hoped Suu Kyi could improve life in Myanmar so they could return home. 

We met Yin Noi, a domestic worker, waving a sketch she had made of Suu Kyi. She had been waiting to catch a glimpse of her since 5 a.m. "I am so excited," she said.

Suu Kyi arrived in Thailand Tuesday evening. Even during her brief periods of freedom in Myanmar she's been reluctant to leave the country, fearing the ruling generals would not let her back in again, even when her husband was dying in the U.K. 

She will be attending a regional economic summit in the Thai capital, giving a speech there Friday and meeting several heads of state. She seems certain to steal the show, much to the discomfort of Myanmar's President Thein Sein, who started the reforms that led to Suu Kyi’s new found freedom. He was invited too, but cancelled, not wanting to be upstaged.

Still, her decision to travel now is a mark of confidence in the reform process, which has not only seen her release from house arrest, but also the release of political prisoners, media reforms and open elections, in which Suu Kyi herself won a seat in parliament.

Thai officials are pleased that Suu Kyi has chosen their country for her first overseas visit, but say they've been kept in the dark about her plans, which include a weekend visit to a refugee camp on the Thai-Myanmar border.

"We'll have to play it play it by ear, I guess," one Thai official told the New York Times. 

Mega political celebrity
Next month Suu Kyi heads to Europe. She'll visit Norway for some unfinished business – picking up her 1991 Nobel Peace Prize, and will address the British parliament. 

She's also considering visiting Ireland to meet Bono, the Irish rock musician who campaigned for her release.

That will certainly seal her status as a mega political celebrity. It may also irritate some of the still powerful conservative generals at home, and even some of her supporters, who will hope she doesn't lose sight of desperate plight of so many of her compatriots – so starkly on display amid the shabby fish markets of Mahachai.

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ULUGAN BAY, Philippines – First ashore were a group of scouts, swimming slowly and silently to the beach, gauging the defenses before calling in the main body of 84 U.S. and Philippine Marines.

It was all stealth – at least until they were surrounded by camera-wielding journalists.

"Will the media please stay in a group to one side," came the plea through loud speakers from the sort of master-of-ceremonies from the Philippines military.

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"This would normally be taking place at night," he informed us. "And they would be wearing night-goggles," he continued. "Please will the media stay to one side."

The main body of Marines swept in, crouching in their inflatables, guns at the ready. But the journalists were equally well prepared. The Philippines media is nothing if not feisty, and completely ignored the increasingly forlorn voice on the loud speaker. They were immediately at the side of the Marines as, through a fog of fake smoke grenades, they launched an assault on a compound that had been taken over by "terrorists.”

"Will the media please group to one side,” the refrain continued. Thank goodness the troops were firing blanks.

Playing down China’s fears
These exercises are an annual event, and Wednesday's drill was the culmination of two weeks of exercises that have involved 4,500 U.S. soldiers and 2,500 from the Philippines.

It comes at a time of rising tension in the energy-rich South China Sea, ownership of which is disputed by China (which claims just about all of it), as well as the Philippines, Vietnam, Brunei, Malaysia and Taiwan.  

Beijing has been increasingly assertive in the area, and the U.S.-Philippine drill coincides with a tense stand-off between Chinese and Philippine vessels around Scarborough Shoal in a different part of the South China Sea.

Beijing has condemned the current exercises, saying it raises the risk of confrontation. But U.S. officials Wednesday were keen to play down the China angle, insisting the exercises were all routine.

"[The joint-exercises] been taking place for decades," Ensign Bryan Mitchell, the US. Marine spokesman, told me.

"The planning took place months and months ago. There are a whole range of real world applications." Much of this year's exercises have been geared towards humanitarian relief, he added.

"For us this exercise is all about achieving inter-operability, and we are not allowing any of the other things going on to let us lose focus on that."

The purpose of the exercise was a little more blurred for Neil Estrella, a spokesman for the Philippine forces. An exuberant man in dark glasses, he waved his arms towards the South China Sea in front of him.

"China, they claim it all," he said with a sharp distaining laugh. "They'll be claiming America next."

I asked him about the scenario of Wednesday's exercise, re-taking a coastal base from "terrorists."

There was another disdainful laugh as he shifted his glasses. "This could just as easily be an island," he said. "We call them terrorists – but it’s a generic term."

As we spoke, loud pops and bangs punctuated the conversation as the Marines continued to clear the buildings behind us, and the increasingly exasperated voice on the loud speaker urged: "Will the media PLEASE keep to one side."

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KAREN STATE, Myanmar – At first light, a haze from dry-season fires hung low over the Moie River, which marks the border between Thailand and Myanmar (also known as Burma).

It was a good time of day for a discrete crossing from one of the many small clearings in the thick tropical undergrowth lining the Moei's muddy waters.

It took just moments for our long-tailed boat to reach the Myanmar side, where after making our way over a rickety make-shift bridge and climbing the steep river bank we were welcomed to the seventh brigade headquarters of the Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA), the military wing of the Karen National Union (KNU), which has been fighting the Myanmar government for decades.

We were greeted by Saw Hla Hgwe of the KNU, a short bespectacled man, wearing a red Ferrari baseball cap.

"We have two big problems in this country, ethnic rights and democratic rights," he said, "and until both these problems are solved there can be no peace and stability."

The mostly Christian Karen people have been fighting against Myanmar’s central government for 62 years, which makes this one of world's longest-running – and most brutal – civil wars.

It's also one of the world's great forgotten conflicts. Not even Rambo could change that; his last movie was set here (though filmed in Thailand), with Sylvester Stallone taking on what appeared to be the entire Myanmar Army in an effort to rescue a bunch of Christian missionaries kidnapped by soldiers as they were taking aid to Karen villagers.

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New era?
In January, though, the KNU signed a ceasefire deal with the Myanmar government, and KNU leaders are in Yangon this weekend for further talks. They are also planning to meet pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, whose election to parliament last weekend is just the latest and most significant development in a fast-moving reform process.

But it’s a reform process that has been greeted with extreme caution by the KNU.

"Right now I think that they are not trustworthy," Saw Hla Hgwe told me. "We have heard this kind of talk many times, but it never comes to reality, so this time we are being careful and cautious."

It doesn't help that the KNU itself is faction-ridden and has been much weakened by successive army onslaughts. It is also just one of a patchwork of ethnic groups that make up 30 percent of Myanmar's population. Most have their own militias, and the U.S. has said that ethnic peace is a precondition for fully lifting sanctions on Myanmar.

"For genuine peace, the government must prove that it is willing to share power," said the KNU's Saw Hla Hgwe.

Soldiers in flip flops
The seventh brigade camp consisted of a series of small wooden buildings, set around a dusty parade ground, where their commander, Saw Jorny, gathered about 50 members of his rag-tag army for a pep-talk, reminding them not to break the ceasefire – but to remain on their guard.

His soldiers carried a variety of weapons – from ageing AK-47s to newer-looking M-16s. Many wore only flip flops on their feet.

One young soldier had a prosthetic foot, and when I asked him what had happened he just shrugged. "Landmine," he said. "Over there, behind the mountain."

In fact I was surprised not to see more missing limbs, since this is one of the most mine-infested areas on the planet.

The Myanmar army has been accused of gross human rights abuses against the country's ethnic minorities – ranging from rape and forced labor to torture and murder.

Tens of thousands of Karen have been forced from their homes, their villages destroyed. Many have fled across the Moie River to take refuge in sprawling camps that cling to the Thai side of the river.

Aid groups say there are around 160,000 refugees in Thai camps and hundreds of thousands more have been displaced inside the country. The biggest single group is the Karen people.

‘Hope to go back’
Most Karen refugees we met said they wanted to return to Myanmar – someday. Few had heard about the reform process in Yangon, and for many the horrors they'd experience were still raw.

"They came to our village, shooting at us and planting landmines," said Ma Aye, who fled to Thailand with her children two years ago. "We just couldn't stay anymore."

Nearby, Wee Thwa was building a new home from wood and dried leaves. "We were afraid. We couldn't stay after the army came to our village," he told me. He too had heard nothing of the reforms sweeping Myanmar, but he added: "I hope to go back when the situation is good."

By all rights, Karen State should be a prosperous place, sitting on a wealth of raw materials and minerals, including rich deposits of gold. But the conflict has impoverished the area, now riddled with malaria and malnutrition.

The success of Myanmar's reforms may well be determined here, and in other ethnic areas, rather than in Yangon or Naypyitaw (the newly created capital city), and by the government's ability – and willingness – to make a lasting peace and overcome decades of conflict and mistrust.

"It's all about trust," Saw Jorny, the seventh brigade commander, told me. "The Karen people want peace – but genuine peace."

YANGON, Myanmar –  A dilapidated  three-story house on Yangon's busy Shwe Gone Dine Road has become the unlikely focus of celebration and hope over the last few days.

It used to be a place of fear.

The house is the headquarters of Aung San Suu Kyi's pro-democracy political party, the National League for Democracy (NLD), which swept most of the votes in Sunday's by-election.

There were wild scenes here as thousands gathered after the polls closed Sunday and reports began to emerge about the scale of the victory – the NLD won 43 out of the 44 seats in parliament they contested. Suu Kyi, the country’s longtime democracy icon who won one of the parliamentary seats, gave a speech from the gate of the NLD’s headquarters Monday. She proclaimed the election a triumph for the people and the start of “a new era” for the long-repressed country.

Suu Kyi hails 'triumph of the people' after Myanmar election win

When I visited the house on Tuesday, the cramped and usually gloomy reception area was packed with well-wishers. On the sidewalk outside, stalls selling t-shirts, caps and bandannas were doing a brisk trade.

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Yet there was a time not so long ago when visiting here could be a nerve-racking experience.

Close call
Across the road sits a small tea shop that was always packed with military intelligence officers who would photograph people coming and going from the house. They would note car registrations and follow visitors in their beat-up white Toyotas when they left.

A few years ago, during a time when Suu Kyi was briefly at liberty (she was under house arrest for about 15 years) I did a TV interview with her at the party headquarters, only to be followed to the airport by one of those beat-up Toyotas. I was detained with my cameraman and taken to a small room where military intelligence officers methodically went through our luggage, confiscating several video tapes.

Eventually, minutes before our flight, they told us to go. We slipped on our shoes, which in accordance with Buddhist tradition, had been left outside the room.

My cameraman appeared to be walking awkwardly toward the plane. It was only after we had boarded the plane and were well on our way to Thailand that he produced from his left sneaker the key tape from the interview.

It had sat there tucked in his shoe outside the room throughout our brief detention.

Of course, after we broadcast the interview, I was black-listed from entering Myanmar for about a decade.

A new era
Among journalists there are many similar stories about the NLD headquarters. Some of the funnier ones focus on the sometimes extreme lengths reporters would go to disguise themselves from the prying cameras of the spooks, who in turn would go to absurd lengths to creep up on the reporters with their large and unwieldy cameras. They sometimes resembled a grotesque cross between George Orwell and the Keystone Cops.

There was, however, nothing funny about them to those who risked their lives working for the NLD and whose latest and usually disheartening briefings we went to hear.

How things have changed.

On Monday, television crews were traipsing through the military intelligence’s tea shop to climb a hill behind it in order to get a better shot of the NLD house. It seemed like the ultimate indignity for the men whose word has been law here for decades.

But they haven't completely abandoned their old haunt. As we came back down the hill and around the back of the tea shop we were confronted by an officious-looking man with a dog-eared notebook demanding to know our names.

We ignored him and left.

As our van pulled away I couldn't help but look behind, searching for the beat-up Toyota on our tail.

It was nowhere to be seen, which might sound trivial against the background of the weekend's historic elections, but in its own way it's an enormous sign of change.

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UTATSU, Japan – At first light, the cove at Utatsu is a picture of tranquility, the silence broken only by the chugging of engines as a fleet of small boats makes its way out across the flat blue water.

But the small harbor from which they leave is cracked and has sunk by two and a half feet. Beyond the beach is the crumpled remains of a seawall, tossed aside by the tsunami, and behind that the foundations are all that are left of a cluster of homes.

"I can't even find the words to describe it," said Hiroko Mirura, who heads a local women's fishing association, and who lost her husband in last year’s tsunami.

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Before the disaster, the local economy was built around scallops, oysters and seaweed – with the seaweed from here prized across Japan. But Utatsu lost 80 of its 100 fishing boats.

 

The boats that survived were mostly out at sea when the raging water swept in, but for the first time since the disaster, they are now back out, harvesting seaweed.

 

"It's a start," Mirura told me, "but we still need to fix the fishing facilities." Now up to 200 people are back at work.

Slimy mess tastes good
We joined the seaweed farmers on a bitterly cold morning as they pulled from the water giant branches of the slimy weed, known in Japan as wakame. It's grown from long frames, marked by rows of buoys. Mostly this is a family business, and men and women with craggy weathered faces worked methodically at the weed with their curved knives.

Few words were spoken, though one man, taking a break, cigarette hanging from his lips, told us: "It's good, the quality is very good this year." They expect it to fetch high prices in the market.

Back on shore, the Wakame is dunked in boiling water, to soften and clean it, before being salted as a preservative. In the past this processing machinery had been kept at their homes, but was mostly swept away with those houses.

The new equipment has been provided under a program backed by the U.S. charity Mercy Corps and their Japanese partner Peace Winds. The giant U.S. retailer Walmart also provided support.

"This is really the beginning of seeing their economy come back to life," said Randolph Martin, who heads Mercy Corps' East Asia operations, and has spent a good chunk of the last year in Japan looking for this type of high impact micro-investment.

"It’s more than just getting the economy going. It's about getting their lives and livelihoods back," Martin told me. "You look here and you don't see helpless victims of a disaster. You see resilient survivors."

 

Around 100 sets of processing equipment have been supplied to the community here. One elderly man bent over his tank of boiling water, stirring the weed with his gloved hand. He stepped back to hand me a stalk of Wakame with a sort of cork-screw type head on it, and regarded as a particular delicacy. It was slimy, crunchy and salty – but surprisingly tasty.

The elderly man laughed, so did several women seated on the ground nearby, sorting through more seaweed, just dragged like some slimy alien off another boat.

The task of rebuilding this battered coast is enormous, but for the small hamlet of Utatsu the return of their seaweed business is an important step towards restoring their livelihoods and sense of community.

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OTSUCHI, Japan – When 79-year-old Junko Takashi saw the tide fast receding in the bay below her house, she remembered the warnings of her mother and her grandmother, that this was a sign of a tsunami.

But still she hesitated.

"I lived on high ground, on the hillside," she said. "I never thought the water could reach here."

She decided to take no chances, and leaving all her belongings behind her, she climbed to higher ground. She didn't see the tsunami rolling in, but remembers the terrible noise – like a waterfall, only far, far louder, she recalled.

By the time it was over, all that was left of her house were its foundations.

Some 70 percent of her town, Otsuchi, was destroyed and 10 percent of the town’s population of 16,000 are dead or missing. Its fishing industry, the backbone of the local economy, was obliterated.

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Yellow flag marks sign of life
One year on and Takashi lives in a temporary home, consisting of a tiny living room, narrow kitchen and bathroom. It's one of a cluster of 80 temporary homes erected on the outskirts of what remains of Otsuchi.

She lives alone, her belongings neatly arranged in little cubicles around her. We could barely squeeze into her living room as she pointed to the television, fridge, microwave and heater, all donated by charities who were at the forefront of a massive aid operation in the weeks and months after the disaster.

Now much of that initial support has gone. "We're on our own now," she said.

"You've got to be positive. I am 79-years-old, who knows how many years I have left."

She told me that before the tsunami she was pretty self-sufficient, since she had land to grow all the vegetables she needed, and her two brothers were fishermen. Now she had to buy everything with her pension, while trying to save for an uncertain future.

But free temporary housing, in which 2,000 of Otsuchi's people now live, is only available for two years.

Outside her home, and outside those of many of her neighbors, flutters a little yellow flag. I asked her what that was for.

"They are for everybody over 65 and living alone," she replied. They are asked to put the flags out in the morning and take them down in the evening. If no flag appears in the morning, then officials will come and check on them.

Mountains of debris and uncertain plans
Otsuchi appears to have made great strides in cleaning up the twisted wreckage that was once their town, and removing the fishing boats flung inland.

Looking down from the surrounding hills and all you see is a flat plain with a dusting of snow, just the foundations marking where buildings used to stand.

But the remains of the town has essentially been scooped up and piled into vast mountains of debris, which will take years to dispose of.

Takashi believes she will be allocated a new apartment once she leaves her temporary home, but the town of Otsuchi has been slow to draw up plans for the future. There is still no blueprint for what will replace a town virtually wiped from the map.

The local mayor has pledged to build a new 50-foot high seawall, more than twice the height of the one tossed aside by the tsunami. But there is no agreement as to where any new town will be built, nor how it can be made economically viable.

Elderly people, who dominate many of these small coastal towns, are wary of grand plans for new (and more economically sustainable) towns. They form an important political group.

"I want to live where I used to live," Takashi said. "I was comfortable there."

Staying positive
The future looks daunting, but Takashi is remarkably upbeat, showing me photos of some of the charity workers and celebrities who have visited over the months.

"I like visitors. I like to talk with people," she said.

"It's always been my policy to be positive about what lies ahead."

NAYPYITAW, Myanmar – U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton could be forgiven for believing she's visiting two different countries – one called Naypyitaw, the other Myanmar.

Naypyitaw is the new capital of Myanmar, the country formerly known as Burma. It’s been built from scratch in the middle of nowhere. It's still a work in progress, it was only designated as the administrative capital in 2005, and until recently was largely off-limits to foreigners.

It’s a sprawling, surreal place with so few people that its eight-lane highways are almost deserted – a somewhat shocking site in this congested part of the world.

For several miles down one stretch, I saw just three motorcycles and a truck transporting a group of workers who had been tending the landscaped gardens on either side of the road.

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Despite the apparent lack of people, Naypyitaw does have plenty of monstrous government buildings and villas, and several hotels and an international airport are under construction.

"Where's downtown?" I asked a Myanmar journalist. "I keep asking them that," he replied, “But nobody seems to know."

For many, Naypyitaw is a symbol of military ego, a metaphor for the former junta's isolation from the world – and its own people.

Myanmar's new president, Thein Sein, a former army officer, is reportedly a modest man. But there's little modesty about his sprawling palace, where he and other officials from the new and nominally civilian government received Clinton in an ornate reception room. It was so new you could almost smell the paint.

The police made a big show of stopping what little traffic there was to make way for the Clinton cavalcade as it crisscrossed the city.

There was never any danger of congestion.

Myanmar has been so secretive that it's not clear precisely when work began on the city, nor how much it cost. It is lavish by any standards, but almost obscenely so against the backdrop of the enormous poverty elsewhere in the country.

It's hard to say where the money came from – but the military had its finger in many business pies, of various degrees of legitimacy. China has also been a big benefactor.

The government justified the move by saying Yangon was too crowded, and that Naypyitaw was chosen because it is smack in the middle of the country. Though one bizarre explanation was that former military strongman Than Shwe was shaken by an astrologer's warning that an American attack was imminent and Yangon was too exposed. Cynics suggested he was afraid of his own people as well.

The real Myanmar
Clinton flew late in the afternoon Thursday to the country’s old capital, Yangon, the city also known as Rangoon, seemingly a world away. Yangon, 200 miles from Naypyitaw, is a city of stunning pagodas and dilapidated, colonial-era buildings, including the run-down lakeside residence of pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

It’s a real city, with real people and a real soul. And for the most part, its residents are giving the benefit of the doubt to the reforms coming from Naypyitaw.

Clinton met Suu Kyi for a private dinner Thursday evening, the meeting itself a remarkable sign of change.

Many are still skeptical about the government's intentions – although Suu Kyi isn't among them.

She was expected to tell Clinton she thinks President Thein Sein is sincere in wanting change, that he truly believes it is the best way forward for the country.

Suu Kyi will likely test the reforms by standing for a vacant parliamentary seat early next year.

It is an unusually positive response to the government’s claims of reform – she’s been persecuted for years by the regime for her pursuit of democracy, spending 15 of the last 21 years under house arrest.

Thursday evening was the first time the two have met, and Clinton, while welcoming the reforms, is taking a more cautious public line.

That, after all, is her job.

Though it’s my guess that she'll be enchanted both by Suu Kyi and Yangon – a good deal more so than the sterile meeting rooms of Naypyitaw.