It's been five months since a massive earthquake hit Myanmar and neighboring Thailand.

David Rising with The Associated Press explains that nowhere was as badly hit as Mandalay, Myanmar's second largest city, which was the epicenter of the 7.7 magnitude quake.

Here, the quake brought down many buildings, including hospitals, schools, churches, mosques, and the building here behind me, the Sky Villa Condominium and Hotel.

In most other areas, the main focus has been on reconstruction, but there are challenges.

Myanmar is in the midst of a civil war, and many places remain difficult or impossible to reach.

International media has been largely kept away, but the military authorities who seized power from democratically elected Aung San Suu Kyi in 2021 allowed the AP to survey the damage in Mandalay and Naypyitaw, the capital.

Along the road from Yangon, the largest city, the road now there is fully open with temporary bridges or detours to get through areas where spans were destroyed.

There has been fighting between pro-democracy militias and government forces on that road since the earthquake, but not lately.

Aid organizations say, however, that fighting and military checkpoints elsewhere have made the delivery of humanitarian supplies difficult, even though it is desperately needed in places - especially shelter - now that the monsoon season has begun.

Overall, nearly 4,000 people have been confirmed to have died in the quake, but those figures could be much higher because there are areas that are not yet reached and they haven't been factored in. Authorities here tell us it will take years for Myanmar to rebuild.

AP video shot by Fadlan Syam

Production by Jerry Harmer