Friday 28 March
After a few hours sleep at the airport hotel in Bangkok, I hopped on an early, short flight to Yangon filled with anticipation about throwing a beer party in a country with one of the worst human rights records in the world. At the same time I was supremely excited about discovering an enormous, beautiful, Buddhist country that seemed to live in an isolated time warp.
Landing in Yangon and driving down the tree-lined streets, my first impression was of the abundance of mid-80s Toyota Corollas and people walking down the streets, not a few of which were barefoot monks. Our office was set up a driveway and in a two-storey colonial building, as if it could have been a guest house prior to becoming the headquarters of the nation's biggest brewer.
After an excellent briefing about the market, the ethnic groups, the border influences and the infamous Golden Triangle (a veritable country in itself, run by drug lords at the intersection of Laos, Thailand and Myanmar), James took me to lunch on some fantastic noodles in a garden that could have been set in the Far North of NZ at the height of summer. We checked out a modern supermarket then headed for the domestic airport, where an Air Bagan shuttle jet took us via Heho to Mandalay.
Hot hot hot! 38 degrees but dry, the 40 minute drive from the airport took us down dusty, bumpy rural roads and into the more built-up but no less dusty or bumpy city. Our hotel was across the road from an enormous, sprawling palace with its own golf course inside and fully surrounded by a moat, but unfortunately time didn't permit us to appreciate its splendour. We met the hotel manager, dropped our bags and proceeded to the event venue, a large open-air restaurant called Mya Nandar set right on the bank of the Ayeyarwady River. The crowd flowed in early and set the organisers' minds at ease - they had taken a risk by throwing the first ever event of this nature in Mandalay!
We got some food in us and proceeded to rock the party which needed little encouragement - the Thai DJs got the crowd going easily and before the night was over we'd sold out of beer and got almost 600 people into a happy sweaty state of joy! Met a handful of kids from the US who were teaching English, plus one or two rich men's sons, before bouncing down a dark bumpy road to a karaoke joint that seemed like a potential horror movie set. It was a two-storey shack with a tiny TV and not much fun, but I enjoyed the cold beer and fruit there before heading for a super painful 2 hour massage with our general manager! This guy knows how to jam, and at 2am we hit the hay, agreeing to meet for breakfast only 3 hours later.
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