Taungbyone: Gay Myanmar

This year I again attended the Nat Festival at Taungbyone outside of Mandalay. This year, 2009, all of the buses from Yangon to Mandalay were sold out, as was the train. Our hotel room had several sleeping on the floor too!

This is the largest Gay Festival in all of Asia and is held yearly about 20km north of Mandalay, for a whole week! It is held the last part of July or in August, the six days leading up and including the full Moon, 5th Lunar month.

Thousands of people from all over Myanmar came to celebrate the Taungbyone Nats. Taungbyone is a religious ceremony to honor two Moslem brothers on the grounds of a Buddhist temple through the Nat celebrations! It is however in fact largely a gay festival. Almost all Nats in Myanmar are gay. Also many fake gay Nats show up to join in the party!

For six days people dance, eat, and drink. The area is covered with food stands and vender stalls selling everything from house ware to souvenirs. Dance groups cover the area performing all day and into the night. For six days people dance, eat, and drink. During the day and most of the night the different Nat spirits hold performances, each trying to outdo the other.

While the whole festival, day and night, is openly gay the тАШreal eventsтАЩ for gay folks start at night. While the Nat ceremonies continue gays openly come out and hold hands and kiss and walk around with their arms around each other, or go off to sleeping quarters! Many are known to discover a neighbor, or fellow student there they were unaware of!

This year we went as part of the assembly that accompanied one of the well-known Yangon Nats to Taungbyone so we got in on the activities first hand, and on the main stage of the ceremony. The most touching moment was during a Nat ceremony when a father and mother brought their 16 year old son and presented him to the Nat. This is a traditional Myanmar ceremony of dealing with a son that the parents have recognized as gay. Everyone in the audience started crying and applauding while the Nat performed the acceptance ceremony.

I highly recommend this festival to all. Because of the тАШnight activitiesтАЩ and because of the day time heat the best time is to go to the festival about 6:30 pm. The traffic by that time has also thinned out. Just take a motor bike out to the festival. There is plenty of transportation back into Mandalay later.

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[Brad the Impala]

Very interesting, thanks for this. Was the hotel where you stayed in walking distance of the celebrations, or did you stay outside the area and travel in?

Stimulated by your posting I looked for more information, which may be of interest to others.

More Info


[youtube:3js8p0mh]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8tjBVSHGig8[/youtube:3js8p0mh]

I stayed at a hotel in Mandalay. The festival is about 18 km outside in a small village. If you want to go to the festival just tell your hotel that you want transportation and they will call a taxi from their list. The taxi can take you there and and wait for you if you want to pay for that service or you can take one of the many buses or motor bike taxis back into the city.

Great video! Thanks for posting! That is the real thing. The only thing they did not show was the whiskey bottle being passed around!

They also didn't show any cute boys. Doesn't look particularly gay to me.

[Beachlover]

Thanks Brad... interesting video.

Yes, I agree... you gain more merit if videos have cute boys in them LOL.

[Brad the Impala]

This a much travelled thread, might almost have been to Burma and back! Started on the Gay Thailand forum, moved to the World forum, and then to here, ending up beside an identical post.