Opium found its way to Myanmar

       According

to historical records. Portuguese explorers first landed and settled down in Motetama, in southern

Myanmar in Taungoo Dynasty in the year 1515. Since then many travellers had visited the country and in 1585,

a Venetian by the name of Caesar Fredericke came to Myanmar and he recorded about his opium trade in Bago,

the capital city. In his records, he wrote about his dangerous adventures on how he twice smuggled opium

cargo from Cambay, a west-coastal city of India and how he to wait in Myanmar for two years to get a good

price for his opium. By his records, it can be seen that, Fredericke was a carpetbagger from Italy who

came to Asia during the early hey days of the Portuguese in this part of the world. In the 1613 records

of a Dutch Company, it was mentioned that 200 pounds of opium were sold every year in Malacca for the Thai

and Myanmar (Bago Division) market at very high profits.