This Country Is Ravaged by War, but Its Rich Feel ‘Positive Vibes Only’
The lifestyles of the wealthy in Myanmar — nightclubs, caviar and trips abroad — have been largely untouched by years of deadly conflict.
By Hannah Beech
Visuals by Daniel Berehulak
Hannah Beech and Daniel Berehulak spent three weeks in Myanmar, traveling through big cities and small villages.
After midnight, amid a war, the D.J. hyped the crowd.
“Are you ready to party?” he yelled into the mic, adding an expletive for emphasis.
The partygoers of Pioneer Plus, the most exclusive nightclub in the war-torn nation of Myanmar, were ready. The D.J. had come all the way from Croatia, after all. Young women gyrated onstage. Johnnie Walker flowed, but only Blue Label because that is the way these high-rollers roll. A private table for the evening — with hookah, imported fruit and pyramids of frosted shot glasses — costs hundreds of dollars to book.
In the bathrooms, and on the dance floor in stolen moments between flashes of the strobe, some denizens of Pioneer Plus swallowed pastel tablets that tinged their breath with vanilla or grape candy. The kick from these methamphetamine and caffeine concoctions, branded with the names of local drug syndicates, lasts for hours.
Myanmar, which five years ago descended into full-scale civil war after a military junta overthrew the elected government, led by Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, is in desperate need of a diversion, a respite, a prolonged high.
No one in Myanmar is unaffected by the conflict, which has turned more than half the country into a battlefield but has largely spared the cities. Half the population is now impoverished. Drones, fighter jets and land mines bring horror to civilians. A military draft applies to both men and women. The Myanmar government is again an international pariah, just like it was during earlier decades of military rule.
But even in war, life goes on. The partying class must party, and their consumption is conspicuous.
International sanctions imposed by Western governments on military leaders and their business cronies — weapons dealers, drug lords, natural resource magnates, middlemen for Chinese enterprises — may have halted shopping jaunts to New York, Paris and London. Still, there’s always Dubai, Shanghai and Bangkok.
Yone Lay — the stage name means Little Bunny — is a regular at Pioneer Plus, which is in a tony district of Yangon, Myanmar’s largest city. He raps (“Stupid,” “Someone Who Was Unlucky in Love”), he acts (“Original Gangster,” “Underground”) and he lends his star power to military galas. He once made a music video praising U Min Aung Hlaing, the former military chief who orchestrated the coup five years ago and became Myanmar’s president in April.
When Mr. Yone Lay saunters into the nightclub, entourage in tow, security guards envelop him like a sheath of fine Myanmar silk. The cordon isn’t for show. Some celebrities who publicly cast their lot with the junta, rather than protesting the military’s killing of unarmed protesters, have found themselves targets of urban guerrillas. In 2023, one of Mr. Yone Lay’s acquaintances, Daw Lily Naing Kyaw, a singer who socialized with the generals, was killed by a bullet to the head in Yangon. Months before, Mr. Yone Lay was accosted by a man with a knife but escaped injury. A year later, a bomb exploded in his vehicle. No one was in the car at the time.
“Those people, they want to show that if you’re famous and connected to the military, we can kill you,” Mr. Yone Lay said one recent evening. “From the outside, people don’t realize that people like me are also oppressed.”
Mr. Yone Lay, 40, said that it is easy to forget how much Myanmar has changed during his lifetime. Less than two decades ago, there was almost no internet. In secret, Mr. Yone Lay listened to Eminem, Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg on bootlegged cassette tapes. But the advent of economic and political reforms in the 2010s, including elections in 2015 that ushered in a semi-civilian government, seemed to modernize the nation at warp speed. Mr. Yone Lay rapped about his concerns of that era: “Girls and parties and bling bling.”
Now, he said, his worries are existential. He travels with bodyguards. The stress, he said, makes decompressing at the blingiest nightclubs mandatory.
“We have to find ways to be happy,” Mr. Yone Lay said. “Why can’t we just love all our leaders and live peacefully?”
Yangon, buzzing during the reform years with new construction and advertisements for investment opportunities and business English classes, has largely reverted to a state of decay. Western businesses have mostly left; billboards that once showed off American soft drinks and German sedans now display local instant coffee mixes and bathroom piping.
Still, with enough squinting or blinkering, it is possible to pretend that life in Yangon is not so different from before the coup, at least for a privileged set. At The Yangon Restaurant, partly owned by the son of Mr. Min Aung Hlaing, the menu is showy European and studded with foie gras and caviar. With enough advance notice, a maître d’ said, a sommelier can be flown in from Singapore.
On their social media accounts, Ma Christina Lim, 36, and her husband, Ko Thu Rayn Kyaw Moe, 38, parade their fabulous lifestyles in Yangon and beyond, at Club Med in the Maldives, at the Great Wall in China. There are color-coordinated outfits in leather and velvet, plus more than 200 brand collaborations with the likes of Samsung, Carlsberg and a local yacht club. On YouTube, Facebook and Instagram — the latter two are officially banned in Myanmar, requiring VPNs to access — the couple has garnered millions of views for baby gender reveals (a popped balloon cascading pink confetti for their firstborn, a girl) and photos with celebrities who are tight with Mr. Min Aung Hlaing’s family.
“Our content, we like to stick to positivity, like positive vibes only,” Ms. Lim said. “You want viewers to feel good after watching our videos.”
In the days after the coup, Ms. Lim, like many members of Myanmar’s English-speaking jet set, posted photos on social media of the couple joining the protesters who peacefully marched to oppose the military intervention. Millions of people had taken to the streets nationwide to support the ousted civilian leader, Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi.
Within weeks, the military began killing protesters by gunshot — as well as children who happened to be nearby — and jailing dissenters. An armed resistance coalesced in the rainforests of Myanmar’s borderlands. Celebrities and influencers decried the military’s deadly crackdown. Ms. Lim posted on Facebook, the couple’s hands forming the three-finger gesture of resistance and memorializing “the martyrs who will never be able to return home.”
Then, the couple went silent. In early 2022, in their first post since Myanmar’s civil war flared, Ms. Lim and Mr. Thu Rayn Kyaw Moe celebrated their wedding anniversary, outfitted in matching crimson. In the years since, the pair, whose families made their fortunes in real estate, paper, imported vehicles and cold storage, has eschewed politics, instead gushing over luxury cars, breast pumps and American vitamin gummies. They extol the best dishes at the best French restaurant in town. They lavish attention on a French bulldog named Blue, as well as their two children.
“I feel like what happened happened,” said Ms. Lim, referring to the coup and its violent aftermath. She acknowledged that “it’s dark” — but because of chronic electricity shortages.
“At the same time,” she added, “people are just going to work regularly, going to school regularly.”
Even their mundane posts attract big audiences, but perhaps that’s the point. A Facebook video in which Mr. Thu Rayn Kyaw Moe inexpertly fried eggs and boiled instant noodles received 1.1 million views.
The coup and civil war have thrown into relief the choices of Myanmar’s rich. In Mandalay, the nation’s second-largest city, the Chinese traders who once came for jade and other jewels are mostly gone. Occasionally, handmade bombs target military officers or people considered accomplices to the regime.
Still, Ma May Nwe Htun, an actor, singer and social influencer better known as Sweet, said she had no interest in escaping Myanmar, where her family owns a gold business. Many friends have left for safer lives overseas, she said, but this is home, with its bustling teahouses and golden pagodas.
“We gotta have fun, baby,” Ms. May Nwe Htun said. “We have to do our best if we want to stay in the country we love.”
One recent evening, she threw a birthday party for her teenage son, who goes to an international school that has now lost most of its international students. There was a basketball-themed cake and a band of transgender entertainers. Overhead, in the hot, dark sky, fighter jets roared past on sorties to rebel-held territory, where civilians are terrorized by airstrikes. By the river in Mandalay, the thud of the bombing campaigns echoes in the night.
Back in Yangon, at Pioneer Plus, the singer-girlfriend of Mr. Yone Lay, the rapper, downed shot after shot. A member of an ethnic minority group that has a large militia at war with the Myanmar military, she is afraid, she said, of being targeted as a turncoat for dating a musician close to the army regime. She spoke to The New York Times on the condition that her name not be used.
“The people outside, they only know that the military kills, they only know one side,” she said. “I just want to be an artist, not a businessman or politician.”
She stood up unsteadily, the alcohol muddling her movements. Her friends linked their arms with hers, supporting her.
“Let’s dance,” she said, reaching out a manicured hand, her mascara smudged from earlier tears. “Let’s forget everything.”
Hannah Beech is a Times reporter based in Bangkok who has been covering Asia for more than 25 years. She focuses on in-depth and investigative stories.