MANDALAY (Myanmar), March 3: Opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi consulted with a doctor at a large campaign rally on Saturday after telling the crowd that she felt unwell and dizzy.

The doctor and other party members said the 66-year-old Nobel Peace Prize laureate was feeling tired because of her rigorous campaign tour ahead of April 1 by-elections.

Ms Suu Kyi went to a hotel room and was recuperating after the rally, said Nge Nge, a personal aide who is also a physician.

“She is feeling better now. She’s taking a rest,” Mr Nge Nge said.

Ms Suu Kyi flew on Saturday from Yangon to Mandalay, Myanmar’s second-largest city, and was greeted by what appeared to be the largest crowd so far in her election campaign, which has been hailed as another sign of how dramatically politics has changed in the country since a nominally civilian government took office a year ago and ended decades of military rule.

Many tens of thousands of cheering supporters clogged the roads for several kilometres starting at Mandalay’s airport, slowing her convoy to a crawl until she reached a vast open field for a rally that was packed with tens of thousands of more people.

“I haven’t seen such a huge crowd since 1988!” a smiling Suu Kyi told her cheering supporters, referring to a pro-democracy uprising that was brutally crushed by the former military regime.

“The road ahead is rough and tough,” she said. “Democracy is hard to achieve and even if it is obtained, it will not be easy to sustain. We all have to work hard.”—AP