Mandalay: November
Fifty years of Burma’s military dictatorship, I’m thinking to myself as I land at Mandalay airport, then Western sanctions, then the ravages of cyclone Nargis: Mandalay is going to be a scene of grinding poverty. What greets me is a boom town. At the Unique nightclub, the party next to me are necking Johnny Walker Blue Label from the bottle. At the new Mercedes showroom, a student just bought a red C-Class for US$90,000, they tell me, to drive to school in. At the moat in front of the army headquarters, beneath a giant sign reading “Tatmadaw [the army] and ...
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