Hunyo 9, 2008

YANGON (AP) - When a taxi carrying two Westerners pulled up this past week at the Shwe Sin hotel at the Chaung Tha beach resort in Myanmar's cyclone-stricken Irrawaddy delta region, cheers rang out from local residents and workers.

The two were congratulated for being the first foreigners to set foot in town since Cyclone Nargis slammed ashore last month, wiping entire villages off the map and killing an estimated 78,000 people.

The disaster, and the military government's "stay-away" attitude toward foreign aid workers and reporters, has scared off tourists, adding to the area's woes.

Residents of Chaung Tha, perched on the western side of the delta, more than 60 miles from the eye of the storm, say no one there was killed or injured and that the hotels were undamaged.

But the fishing village-turned-vacation spot is reeling from the economic fallout of the May 2-3 storm.