That was about a month after the cyclone had swept through the country's southern coast in the first week of May, leaving more than 85,000 people dead. Some 50,000 are still missing.

Less than a week later, he walked down the same road. The street lamps were up and shining brightly.

'That was within a few days,' says Mr Badrul, a disaster expert from Malaysia's National Security Council. He was a member of one of the teams sent into the delta by Asean, the United Nations and the Myanmar government to survey the damage and assess the needs of residents.

'The street lamps were set up by the government...we didn't have to walk around with a torch,' he adds.

Mr Badrul also remembers seeing buffaloes trucked in to replace those which had died. That enabled farmers to start ploughing what remained of their padi fields for the next planting season.

'That was most useful because most of the buffaloes and cows had been killed by the cyclone,' he says.

The scenes described by Mr Badrul and several other members of the assessment teams stand in contrast to the flood of reports in the immediate aftermath of the cyclone that criticised the Myanmar government's response to the disaster.

There were, for instance, stories of survivors booted out of government relief camps, aid being channelled to markets, and people arrested merely for helping out.

But the assessment teams heard otherwise.

'Many preferred to stay in their own villages,' says Singapore's Major Ow Yong Tuck Wah, a Singapore Civil Defence Force officer. 'It was the rice-planting season, and they wanted to stay home so that they could try to plant their crops again.'

At the village of Pyim Sa Lu in Labutta township - one of the worst-hit areas - the government had set up relief camps. But Major Ow says he saw some villagers who had moved in leave as soon as they could get a tarpaulin to build their own shelters.

'I didn't see anyone force them out,' says Major Ow Yong. 'They went back on their own.'

Team members who spoke to Asian media this week also said they were allowed to move around and talk to cyclone survivors freely.

Still, some of them took precautions. Each team - made up mostly of young Myanmar nationals from non-governmental organisations (NGOs) - had one official tagging along whose main role was to take them through military checkpoints and speak to village chiefs to get their cooperation for the surveys.

'I thought some villagers might be reluctant to speak the truth when the government escort was around,' says one team member with a laugh.

'So I tried to distract him by getting him to be my interpreter, and the other team members could spread out and talk to the villagers more freely.'

When The Sunday Times, along with other media from Asean nations, flew into the delta last week, evidence of recovery efforts by the Myanmar government and local companies was apparent.

Wooden houses were being built, schools were being rebuilt and lessons had resumed. Numerous tarpaulin sheets had been handed out to villagers to replace roofs and walls that had been blown away.

Asean officials feel that such efforts had been downplayed.

'The world is still very sceptical of our joint efforts,' says Dr Surin Pitsuwan, the secretary-general of Asean, which helped to get the humanitarian efforts going.

'The international community is very critical of Asean and UN engagement with Myanmar even on humanitarian grounds.'

Dr Anish Kumar Roy, the Malaysian who has been assigned to head the Asean effort in Myanmar, questions Western media reports about the situation.

'Western media are not always on the ground, and are getting their sources from secondary sources,' he says.

Indeed, UN undersecretary-general Noeleen Heyzer praises the 'remarkable pace of response'.

'What a difference four weeks have made,' she says.

She believes that the Myanmar government's willingness to allow the assessment teams to cover the entire delta signifies its readiness to cooperate with international aid agencies.

She says: 'To pull all that together in this rather difficult context is remarkable. I see it as a major milestone.'

Major Ow Yong believes that the teams were able to tread the thin line between credibility with international donors and acceptance by the Myanmar authorities because of their neutral status as citizens of Myanmar and Asean reporting to Asean and the UN.

Major Ow Yong also alludes to another unsaid contribution - the Asian factor.

'We are from Asean, and we can understand our neighbours' culture,' he says. 'For example, we knew we had to talk to village chiefs before we could enter a village and do a survey.'

But the scale of the relief effort remains immense. Some UN and Asean officials continue to be sceptical about the Myanmar government's efforts, frustrated by what they believe is the slow pace of the aid programme.

For many weeks after the cyclone, the junta hesitated to allow foreign aid workers in and rejected offers of aid. Many aid agencies are still complaining about limited access to Myanmar and the delta, and pointing to severe shortages of shelters and food.

What's beyond debate is that the 2.4 million survivors of Cyclone Nargis will require help from both the Myanmar government as well as the international community for some time to come.

In practical terms, this means more water and rice to tide them over the planting season; tilling machines and diesel; and shelter from the monsoon season.

UN Resident Coordinator Bishow Parajuli says: 'A lot more is needed to help them stand on their own.'

leskoh@sph.com.sg