"For the past 20 years or so, the movie Thingyan-moe has been an annual staple for Burmese celebrating their New Year Water Festival. It means ‘rain in the water festival?, and the strains of its musical score reverberate everywhere as Burmese throw water over each other. But the movie, stocked with traditional song and dance numbers from the northern capital of Mandalay, may now have a rival. This year, for the first time, bands representing the different cultures of Burma and the five other countries in the Greater Mekong Sub-Region performed in Mandalay. The bands—from Cambodia, China?s Yunnan province, Laos, Vietnam and northern Thailand, as well as Burma—were invited by the Ministry of Hotels and Tourism to take part in a special Thingyan traditional program there..."