FIREWORKS & HIGH FIVES

New Year's Eve under a Military Dictatorship

My guesthouse in Mandalay threw a dinner and party for its half adozen guests last night. Next to an open-air bar a long table was setout, with table cloth and place settings, where the group (a Frenchcouple, a Russian couple, a Canberran ex-pat and myself) gathered to try fruit juice-and-gin and Myanmar Beer over a dinner of friedchicken, grilled chicken and mashed potatoes ('Chicken a la Kiev,just for you,' the 80-year-owner said to the Russians), and frenchfries, while nearby the owner's 30-something son, with a rock hair cut, gathered with school friends, their girlfriends and wives, and a couple kids. Joining us -- the foreigners -- was the engaging 69-year-old mother of the family. We talked about everything from the Korean TV shows she watches from 7 to 8 pm nightly ('it's a priority -- if my grandson wants cartoons on, I give him a little tea money,' she laughs) and the traditional nat spirits she honors along with 'Lord Buddha' nightly ('I spend 60 to 90 minutes a day praying, usually half of it in the morning, then half before I go to bed'). Some of the sutra she offers is for another son, who at 47, suffered a stroke several months ago and is still recovering.

'I repeated the prayer 50 times daily when he was in the hospital, then after he got out I still do it 18 times a day.'
' Why 18?'
'Well, 40 was too much, 30 too, so 18.'
'A lucky number perhaps?'
'Yes, that too. Nine is always lucky.'

Eighteen, you math fans will have noticed is twice nine, and 1+8 is 9 too. She excused herself at 11pm, and I started to feel bad about the sudden segregation between foreigners and locals, so got up to offer a couple pre-midnight toasts, which were returned by the guys. Then we shuffled our feet, listening to particularly profane Snoop Dogg songs,when -- not realizing -- 12:02 had arrived. The son turned down the rap and matter-of-factly announced 'happy new year' (no exclamation point needed), and we all had another toast or two. Subdued but nice.

Less subdued was the next part. The Russians and I took up an offer to drive around town and 'see what's going on.' We could already hear a few fireworks, and we got in the back of a car driven by a couple who barely spoke any English. At Mandalay's huge moat-surrounded palace, where Burma's last king (Thibaw) lived until 1885, hundreds mingled in the streets -- guys weaving around cars on motorcycles in the dust, guys standing in the middle of the road and drunkenly yelling 'happee newww year' and giving high fives to passing motorists. I joined in, as the car nudged forward, past the town ring Sedona Hotel -- 'this is like our Times Square,' the car driver turned to say. Eyes lit up when they looked in to see three foreigners in the back seat of a passing car. 'Where are you from!' yells --more statments than questions -- flew out as we passed. At one point we stopped, and a large guy with eyes out of focus and wearing a hip-hop knit hat, peeked in, mumbling, trying to recall a few English word he knew, but couldn't get anything out that made sense in any language. We drove off, and all burst into spontaneous laughter, even the driver's otherwise-silent wife. Soon someone slapped the back of the car, and our driver -- in a cruelly expensive vehicle in a land where black-market cell phones cost $1200, and locally-made copies of WWII-era US military jeeps $9000 -- got worried and edged away from the crowd. At one corner, he pointed to two middle-aged guys in leather jackets watching passively. 'Military.' Two police cars, and only two, sat parked nearby. Probably a few thousand were drunkenly celebrating a new year in a land that didn't recognize the world calendar not that long ago -- and everything was OK for the night. And this came after local authorities warned teashops -- the usual setting for groups of people of all age, to get together and talk -- to keep to a 11pm curfew. It was 1am and in central Mandalay, things looked manic. 'In Soviet times,' the 37-year-old Russian man suddenly said, 'If the government said there was no groups allowed to be together, it would never happen. They would not allow it. Maybe things are a littlemore free here than we were led to believe.'

For a night anyway.