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She's a former colleague, a United Nations aid worker whom I've visited while travelling in three different countries. So I wrote to let her know that I was thinking about stopping in to see her and her fiance near the end of my long adventure.

"Of course you'll be welcome," she carefully wrote back. "But I'll give you the same schpiel I'm giving everyone else, which is that I feel uncomfortable encouraging tourists to come to a country where the elected government is opposing tourism."

It wasn't exactly a ringing endorsement of my tentative plan to visit Myanmar, and as we e-mailed back and forth over the next couple of months, my aid worker friend's position only became more entrenched. When I arrived in neighbouring Thailand, she happened to be passing through Bangkok on business, so we met for coffee.

I was already familiar with her most compelling arguments: The repressive military regime that rules Myanmar, formerly known as Burma, stands accused of number of brutal acts against its own people, including the use of slave labour to build tourism infrastructure. It maintains tight restrictions on where visitors can go and who they can talk to. It locked up Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi because her National League for Democracy won the parliamentary elections of 1990; she and many rights workers have called for a complete tourism boycott of the country and several foreign governments, including Canada, have responded with various political and trade sanctions.

But now my friend raised another point: the stories and blog I'd been writing about my travels. Even if I included all the sober facts, she argued, wouldn't my simple presence in Myanmar tell readers that the political situation was worth glossing over if it meant getting to see the country's gleaming temples, rustic colonial architecture and legendary blend of cultures?

I was by no means the first traveller or writer to face this quandary. Oppressive regimes from North Korea to South Africa have also been the subject of highly publicized boycotts in the past, and virtually everything published about travelling in Myanmar at least touches on the subject. Even British Prime Minister Tony Blair has weighed in on the country, urging tourists to avoid it.

It was easy enough to ignore Mr. Blair and Myanmar back in Canada, where they may have rated an item in the world briefs. But here I was just a short hop away, and my good friend was strongly hinting that I ought to back off. We parted ways without making any plans - I had nearly two months to spend in the region, so I promised to think it over before buying a ticket.

By chance, my first destination was northern Thailand, a region whose history is intertwined with that of neighbouring Myanmar, through centuries of cultural overlap and cross-border territorial struggle. My wife and I had dinner with another aid worker, a man who makes occasional quiet trips into Myanmar to advise professionals there. As his Thai mother-in-law served up a feast of Thai and Burmese curries, he took issue with my friend across the border.

Although he said he respected the intent behind the international sanctions, he argued that they will never work while Myanmar's neighbours, including China, India and Thailand, do business with the generals in Rangoon.

Yes, tourist dollars help prop up the regime, he acknowledged - but they also bring eyes and ears and video cameras. Human-rights abuses are less likely to happen in places where tourists are allowed to visit, he said.

It is an argument that has been made time and again by those in favour of tourism in Myanmar. Although witnesses don't guarantee peace and harmony - at Tiananmen Square, for example - it's generally accepted that the presence of foreign tourists and observers can at least make a government work harder to suppress its people.

"Keeping the people isolated from international witnesses to internal oppression may only cement the government's ability to rule," concurred a Lonely Planet guidebook lying on a shelf at our guesthouse back in Bangkok.

The publishing company, whose guides are often the first point of contact for many travellers considering their options, has been in the middle of the boycott debate for years. LP lays out both sides for its readers, urging them to fully research the situation in Myanmar and to "minimize the prospect of any money which they might spend going to the military regime."

But the very act of publishing a guide is a powerful inducement in itself, one that arguably allows tourists to skip past the tough questions and head straight for the sights. This has brought LP a certain amount of grief - Tony Blair and a group of celebrity cohorts have urged readers to boycott the company's books because of the issue.

But as we continued our trek around around Southeast Asia, most of those I spoke to about Myanmar did come down on the pro-tourism side.

Cambodia spent years in a protracted civil war dragged out by foreign politics and is still ruled by an unsavoury government, but I was hard pressed during my time there to find anyone, even in the aid community, who advocated an end to the ever-increasing flow of tourists. The same held true in Laos, which is still ruled by a nominally communist government.

Returning to Bangkok, I met with my old friend Joe, a foreign correspondent who has spent a decade chronicling Southeast Asian affairs. We sat on his balcony, drinking cold beer and watching a fiery sunset as we caught up on happenings throughout the region. Among the topics was what to make of the bizarre decision to move Myanmar's capital from Rangoon to a new city being hacked out of malarial jungle in the north.

His opinion on the travel issue was blunt. During his most recent visit, he insisted, all his contacts, including opposition figures and prominent dissidents, "begged" for foreign tourists to come.

"If tourists boycott, it hurts the local people and further isolates them," he wrote later as we continued the discussion by e-mail. "I think any tourist who doesn't heed the advice of the oppressed people they're claiming to be in solidarity with is an idiot."

By this point, I was convinced that I could go to Myanmar without feeling much guilt - even if my being there would help the junta, it would probably help the people just as much. And anything I wrote in my blog would obviously reflect the wide range of opinion about what should be done - if anything, turning readers on to the issues facing travellers there.

But there was still the significant problem of my friend. Although she said I would be welcome in any case, I would truly feel bad about contradicting her obvious preference. During our coffee date weeks earlier, she had looked at me with serious eyes and said that she'd rather I waited to visit a democratic Myanmar. Who could ignore that kind of plea?

In any case, it appeared that I was spared the decision. I had dithered for too long; we no longer had enough time to get in and out of Myanmar before our flight home to Canada. We spent our last days in Bangkok shopping.

At the airport, I looked up on the departure board and noticed a listing for an outbound flight to Rangoon. Was I disappointed not to be on it? Yes - but to be honest, also a little relieved.