Mmmm, I say. By releasing the iron butterfly the military may have cut off her fragile wings. By removing the princess from her global tower, they may have just rendered her fight to be elected impotent. The dictatorship refuses to amend the constitution which states that nobody who married a foreigner can run for office. Suu Kyi is the widow of a Cambridge academic. Her sons are both married to non-Burmese.

The lady comes from a military background and has accepted her restrictions with equanimity and some optimism, but her NLD party is awash with rumblings. A quarter of the parliament is made up of a military block and a new education law removes academic freedom and student unions. A hundred students have been arrested and more injured. The British government, one of the main supporters of the dictatorship, has barely responded. Meanwhile, the people are waiting for Daw Suu, a practising Buddhist, to comment on the shameful slaughter of the Rohinya Muslims in the West by violent Buddhists. Buddhists who don’t step on ants are burning villages to the ground.

So maybe we should reconsider our hols. Russia is out. Another dictator with paranoia and murderous eyes peering out of a dodgy facelift. South Africa is God’s own country, but do you really want to visit a place where a female MP gets her jaw broken during a brawl in a Pretoria parliament and the elected leader spends the nation’s rands on solid- gold bath taps and fleets of Rolls-Royces?

China has artefacts and history to die for—also, 500 executions a year; Ai Weiwei, beaten and imprisoned for his art, under house arrest; a ban on Google; appalling pollution; and the colonisation of Tibet. The American midwest is a place of wonder, but is still working out the best way to chemically kill people on Death Row. France is simmering like a jugged hare with racism of one kind or another and ripe for Le Pen. Italy has its work cut out rescuing survivors from war-torn Libya and the rest of Africa from the sea around Lampedusa and trying to keep Berlusconi and his personal fiscal and carnal pornography from returning to office. Greece is extraordinarily beautiful, historic and needs your euros, or possibly one day your drachmas, more than most. My partner favours Papua New Guinea but with a 28-hour flight to recommend it I’m rather fancying the Swanage.

One country has a rising economy, antiquity to die for, history, sunshine, beaches, more culture than a barrel of yoghurt and some of the best food, best nightlife and most startling innovations in the world. You may be prejudiced against it on hearsay, hysteria and BBC bias, you may hate their aggressive defence and their settlements, and you may spend your days picketing Waitrose for selling its oranges, but why not make up your own mind and go and join sun-seekers, independent thinkers and 40 per cent of the world’s foreign correspondents in the democratic country of Israel. They admit all colours, welcome all creeds—and even let in Guardian readers.