Hanging with the Yangon Youth

Liddy
On our last day in Yangon we decided that the children needed a 'kid day' so we headed for a water park that we had heard about in an 'off the beaten track' guidebook to Burma. It was a water park, Burmese style - a couple of small pools which might have seen chlorine back in the 60s, no changing rooms, a couple of slides most of which were closed off, very tatty, lots of rubbish and as far as the children were concerned, PARADISE.
It was immediately obvious that the rather foxy (I wish) bikini that I had with me was not the done thing - everyone other girl was fully clothed, as were half of the boys, so I wrapped a sarong around me and headed in with the kids, leaving Mike on the side with our stuff. There were loads of kids around, aged about 10 and upwards, mostly the 'cool gang'.
After a while I got out to sit with Mike where we could watch the children, Sam having befriended a boy of about 9, who was playing really nicely with him, whilst Meg just pottered. A young guy in low slung jeans and a huge cap at a jaunty angle sidled up to us. He asked Mike if we have any rappers in our country.
Mike clearly not in tune with the local youth speak, answered 'Rivers, yes we have many rivers in our country'.
I corrected him then offered MC Hammer which apparently was not a very impressive offering and pinned me neatly as the mid-30s woman that I am.
Mike then tried to come up with some more recent bands but struggled beyond 50 Cent and Eminem (we are soooo hip). They then played with Mike's ipod for a bit before Mike pointed out a guy on the other side of the pool with black nail varnish, tight black jeans and a Nazi badge on the thigh.
'That's a punk' said the rapper.
'What's a bank' said Mike.
'No, PUNK'
'Bank???'
Communication was struggling...I intervened.
Next a girl came over. She must have been about 15 with thick black eyeliner and three nails in each ear. She tried to feed Meg some whisky then ambled off.
'That's a sexy girl', said the rapper. ' S-E-X-Y' (Clearly he realised that he needed to spell difficult words). 'Do you have sexy girls in your country?'.
Mike looked at me and said 'That's my sexy girl' (oooh the romance...)
The guy looked a bit surprised.
'No, I mean sexy girl. You know. A-I-D-S.
Aaahh. Clearly sexy girl had different connotations in Myanmar.

There were loads of different 'gangs'. The sexy girls, the banks (punks), rivers (rappers), the ones with multiple piercings, the ones with dyed red hair, the tattoes, the ones a little bit too old to still be hanging round the pool etc. Every so often they would traipse to the water slides and a macho fest would ensure with each trying to outdo the others coming down the slide. I had a go at one point and my sarong came flying off so that was the end of that. The undoubted winner was a guy in his late teens, very buff and easy on the eye, who could run half way down the slide at full tilt, then slide the rest of the way down before skimming right across the plunge pool.

Rock 'ard.