Postcard: Naypyidaw, the police state capital built from scratch (time.com) 
President Obama says his Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will visit Burma (aka Myanmar) next month, the first such visit in half a century. Relations between the U.S. and Burma have been strained during years of rule by a secretive military junta [full blown dictatorship], but its new president has started a process of reform that the U.S. wants to encourage.
So there's been some change in Myanmar, but its leaders still haven't abandoned one tendency of dictators: building monuments to themselves. Myanmar's aging Senior General Than Shwe has built a whole new capital city from scratch, carved out of the jungle.
We're going to hear now from a reporter who visited the city called Naypyidaw. It's a place foreigners were only recently allowed to visit, and foreign reporters are not welcome, which is why we're not giving his name.
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER:
We're going to hear now from a reporter who visited the city called Naypyidaw. It's a place foreigners were only recently allowed to visit, and foreign reporters are not welcome, which is why we're not giving his name.
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER:
The newest and nicest road in Myanmar is paradoxically one of the emptiest as well, [with] only a handful of cars on a desolate four lane highway to nowhere, or so it seems, a place very few people go willingly. More
