IT WAS a premiere in more ways than one. We were the first ''foreign independent travellers'', or non-package tourists, from Hongkong to be granted the new 14-day visas to Burma.
Like many premieres, our 12 days in Burma were not to run smoothly. But the hitches afforded the best insights into the shy Burmese people and the transition the country is going through.
The Myanmar Global Travel Agency staff, who organised the visas, laughed, calling us their ''guinea pigs''. Then, in Rangoon, after three days of fierce negotiation with fledging travel agents, we found it was also a first for our guide - he had never been a guide before.
Relatively few Westerners have been to Burma in the five years since martial law was declared, so the country and its people are remarkably unspoiled by tourism. In village streets you can happen upon entranced actors whose wild dance-drama tells Buddhist stories.
They are hired, with their orchestra and stage, to play and pay homage to the spirits outside homes and so encourage the residents' good fortune. The whole village turns out to see the show.
The new visa allows ''unpackaged'' travel to any part of the country apart from the border areas, where anti-government insurgents are operating.
New, supposedly non-government travel agencies have been licensed by the government specifically to handle foreign travellers, but even these ''independent'' agencies still want to squeeze you into packages for fascinating but well-worn routes.