58This festival is held around the full
moon of Tazaungmon, marking the end
of the rainy season; it is also sometimes
referred to as the Tazaungdaing Festival
of Lights. The tradition of hot-air
balloon competitions was inspired by
the British in the late 19th century.
Other than the Taunggyi Balloon
Festival, which is held in late autumn
to celebrate the end of kathein, there
is little else in the way of tourist appeal
in Taunggyi, a sleepy hill station in
northeastern Myanmar.
During this week-long event, the
daytime sky swarms with giant paper
birds, cows, dogs, dinosaurs and other
animals. At dusk, the meesaya – the
“fire masters” – march in a parade to
the ceremonial launching ground to
fill the night with dazzling pyrotechnic
displays and radiant airborne murals
composed of thousands of tiny candles.
Of all the festival’s airborne
delights, the meegyi (fireworks
balloons), which carry homemade
rockets on bamboo cages, are the
most popular – and they are also
the most difficult to create. Teams of
fire masters spend much of the year
designing and building their balloon,
using generations-old secrets to mix
gunpowder, weave complex fuse
systems, and paint flame-resistant
paper with images of lotus blossoms,
temples, angels, or the Buddha.
If all goes well, the unmanned
apparatuses will rise to around120 metres before launching a half-
hour fireworks display, earning the
winning team glory (and a cash prize).
But it does not always go well, as
U Than Zaw, Taunggyi’s self-declared
top fire master with more than 40
years’ experience in launching
balloons, explains. A balloon might
fire early, bathing the crowd in flame;
a stray mortar might ignite the paper;
the kerosene burner might go out; the
balloon could become over-full and
burst; the bamboo basket might catch
fire, combusting a half-hour’s worth
of fireworks into one great supernova.At dusk, the meesaya – the “fire masters” –
march in a parade to the ceremonial launching
ground to fill the night with dazzling pyrotechnic
displays and radiant airborne murals