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Full Moon Firework Balloon Festival at Taunggyi, Myanmar

Burmese Daze

Steve_t
2006-11-01 12:12:32

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me to hire him instead. When we visited the largest monastery in the town, I was pleased that I had. He took me to one of the dormitories, where I had a long conversation with a group of young monks. They had essentially no English; I had about fifteen words of Burmese. Fortunately my driver acted as a very efficient interpreter. The Burmese seem universally fascinated by football, and there are several cheap, newspaper style magazines, one simply called, "Eleven", for example, with very detailed accounts of Premier League and European football. The monks had several copies. Predictably, they were all keen Manchester United supporters except one, who followed Chelsea.

With an interpreter I had a much more satisfying encounter than if I'd turned up on my own. I asked about their life in the monastery, which was very rigorous, but with a strong community spirit. They asked me mostly about English football. My knowledge is woefully inadequate. I'm an occasional Southampton supporter, so was able, very proudly, to point out that we had actually beaten Manchester United in the 1976 FA Cup final. They weren't impressed. That was ancient history. If it wasn't for their red robes and shaved heads, you would have taken them for a normal bunch of friendly Burmese teenagers.

Oh yes, the Balloon Festival. This was why I came to Myanmar in the first place, and I wasn't disappointed. The festival lasted for six days. Apparently about forty thousand people visited the site each day. North of Taunggyi there were rows and rows of stalls selling clothing, hats, jewellery, bags, handicrafts, religious articles, religious offerings, flowers, every kind of food imaginable, incredibly sweet and sticky concoctions, crystallised fruit, the ubiquitous coffeemix, golden battery operated cats with waving arms (apparently really lucky), paintings.

Every food stall had a TV and VCD player ...