Oliver Conway

Every restaurant where we ate, every hotel we stayed in got a visit and they were clearly terrified by this.

There was almost no campaigning and we found we were not allowed to see it anyway.

Hello.

Hello.

We have permission, yeah.

The local army commander introduced himself and then questioned all the documents we'd been given by the government authorising us to cover the election in his area.

In an effort to shake off the surveillance, we took a boat out onto Inlay Lake, but soon found we were being followed even there by a military intelligence officer.

So we've been trying to talk to these ethnic Intar fishermen who work on the lake about the election, what their hopes are for the future, but our military intelligence escort is just behind us and...

To be honest, they're too scared to say very much at all.

One said the political situation is not good.

The rest of them don't really want to comment.

On reaching a lakeside temple, it seemed the right place to confront our unwanted escort.

Can I ask, why have you been following us all the way across the lake?

As an officer, it's my duty, because you're foreigners.

Jonathan Head in Myanmar.

The price of gold has hit a record high, passing $5,000 an ounce for the first time.

It comes amid worries that the stock market is overvalued.

Our business correspondent Nick Marsh told me more.

For the best part of a couple of years now, that gold has been increasing in value.

Two years ago, in January 2024, an ounce of gold was worth about $2,000.