Mandalay

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We got to Mandalay just in time for the second day of Thingyan Festival. Thingyan Festival is the yearly water festival that commemorates the new year. It is a chance for old sins to be washed off and a time for fresh starts. For strict buddhists, it is a time to wash buddha statues and for the young to wash the hair of their elders. It is also the time for a chaotic 4-day holiday festival where you can't help but join in the madness of getting wet. Mandalay is a big bustling city but we got our first taste of water-related fun getting soaked by young kids with buckets of water while stepping out of a taxi to our hotel. Children were the worst culprits for getting us soaked to the skin and they gang up on street corners armed to the teeth with water buckets, hoses and anything else that could possibly hold water. We were expecting to get wet when strolling the streets but we soon realized that even stepping out to go to a nearby shop was an occasion to possibly have heaps of water doused on us. However, because of the sweltering heat of that time of year, having a cold bucket of water poured down your neck while navigating the large city was rather refreshing. It would not take too long until we dried off, but then again, it wouldn't be long until an another group of people, or even just a solitary local, would top us off with a fresh bout of water. Sometimes people would just ceremonially pour a small cup of water down our neck and wish us a happy new year, other times it would be the more elaborate drenching, played out with the joyous activity of a water fight.

Foreigners were a particular target for these shenanigans and we soon got used to the fact that while strolling the streets, we were just asking to get soaked to the skin. Tourists were targeted the most as a way of welcoming them into their special holiday. It was all in excellent humour and groups of people would ride around in the back of pick up trucks, shouting, playing music, throwing water everywhere and inviting themselves to get splashed, generally being happy to be celebrating the new year. The greatest and most effective water-dousing tool we saw were the large hoses connected to fire hydrants!

Gabrielle gasped when she saw possibly the most dangerous sight on her travels so far. A young boy riding on the front bonnet of a car while pedestrians soaked him and the car with hoses. We saw some hilarious sights such as young boys piled on a motobike, literally dancing to the music at the platforms, the bike was bouncing up and down. The 'platforms' were designated areas where both loud music and heavy water was blasted out, creating a sort of outdoor club for the younger generations to enjoy a dance and a soaking.

We couldn't do much 'sight-seeing' so we decided to wait until the water festival was over. Unfortunately though, Gabrielle fell ill and was bed-ridden for a few days so not much of the sights were seen in the end. After Gabrielle had recovered, however, we had just enough time to go visit the Moustache Brothers. The Moustache Brothers are a Mandalay institution as they use sardonic humour to criticise the government. They became a celebrity cause after two were arrested and sentenced to 9 years hard labour following a joke against the government at a performance outside Aung San Suu Kyi's house. We headed down to get some tickets and ended up getting invited in their living room for a chat and to help Lu Maw with his english for some jokes. It was quite funny explaining how to pronounce words such as 'oppression' to a Burmese man! Their whole family were really friendly and typically full of Burmese hospitality. During the day, the monsoon weather came early, drenching the city with water and flooding many roads. Unfortunately, The Moustache Brothers house was flooded so they couldn't perform later that evening. Instead, we spent the night having a good chat and cup of tea with them while laughing at their natural humour.

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