In this article, the author recounts her experience of being invited into an orphanage while on a tour of Dala, Myanmar as though the orphanage were a tourist site. According to the article, the tour guide claimed the orphanage was a popular tourism spot and it is not the only orphanage in the country welcoming tourists. Orphanage tourism, says the author, is on the rise in Myanmar and in other countries in the region such as Cambodia and Thailand. Some tourists choose to volunteer at these orphanages but, cautions the author, they are often doing more harm than good by “inadvertently fuelling demand for orphans across Southeast Asia.”
