All Las Vegas casinos have themes, right? The huge Wall Street brokerage firm of Bear Stearns tells me that Mandalay Bay is "heavily-themed." So what's the theme? Is this such a hard question? This casino resort is the fifth largest hotel in the United States, but nobody can quite get a grip on what it's all about. In last year's Bear Stearns report on the gaming industry, they describe the MGM Grand as "Hollywood-themed," Paris as Paris-themed, New York-New York as New York-themed, The Venetian as Venice-themed, and Bellagio as based on the Swiss-Italian resort of Lake Como. (That one is pretty obscure, but it is a theme.) Finally we get this description of Mandalay Bay: "heavily themed."

Why doesn't it say "Myanmar-themed"? Isn't the city of Mandalay in Myanmar? In fact, I would say Mandalay Bay is probably the first, last and only Las Vegas resort ever named after anything in Myanmar, so shouldn't they make the most of it? Surely they don't mean it's based on "The Road to Mandalay," the goofball movie starring Bob Hope and Bing Crosby, because that would involve production numbers with fruit-basket headpieces and balloon pants.

But it's heavily themed? Well, yeah, I guess so, if heavily- themed means tropical bird shows in the lobby (with bikini-clad tropical-bird wranglers) and a lot of plastic jungle foliage in the casino and a shark tank out back. But look at the exterior, which is where you get your major theme clues.

Nothing. It's just a huge shiny golden modernistic building with a whole lot of palm trees around it. What is that? Miami? Naw, the Flamingo has already tied up theme rights to Miami. They're going for something Asian, so why wouldn't it be Singapore Bay? Or Kuala Lumpur Bay? Because those cities do have huge shiny golden modernistic buildings. Mandalay, on the other hand, has wooden shacks and bicycle rickshaws.

All right, they chose the word Mandalay, so let's assume they meant it. This is a hotel that wants to be associated with the second city in Myanmar, a city one-third the size of Las Vegas in a country which has been ruled by a right-wing military junta for several decades now and is mostly known for its violent suppression of civil rights and refusal to accept the popular winners of elections. But the capital of Myanmar and the biggest city is Rangoon, so why didn't they go with "Rangoon Bay"? Maybe because the military junta rules from Rangoon, so they chose Mandalay to distance themselves from the bad-guy military leaders and . . . whoops! . . . the newsstand in Mandalay Bay is called the Rangoon News Bureau. So no, that's not it. So they named a major Las Vegas resort after Mandalay, a fairly ugly and depressing city full of pagodas and statues of Buddha that's not even that historic and in fact is two years younger than Las Vegas. (The Mormon Fort was built in 1855, whereas Burmese King Mindon Min created Mandalay from nothing in 1857 in an attempt to fulfill a Buddhist prophecy.)

But then there's that other pesky word: "bay." There's no bay in Mandalay! The bay is in Rangoon. Mandalay is the principal inland port on the Ayurwaddy River, where those low-slung lazy barges stop for a while as they carry the rice crop 1300 miles down to the sea. If the builders of Mandalay Bay want us to think of the waterfront in Mandalay, then they're creating a picture of rickety wooden wharves and fish markets on a muddy brown river. Not exactly the kind of image that pumps that dice action.

Okay, so I'm waltzing through the Mandalay Bay last week and I'm looking for signs of Mandalay. Maybe the gift shop will have rare Burmese crafts made of jade, silk, brass and copper, all of which are sold in the the markets of the real Mandalay. But the gift shop turns out to be called the Bali Trading Company and features "South Seas treasures," creating a mystery-within-the- mystery because Mandalay is not in the South Seas, but . . . neither is Bali! Are they really trying to mess with my head here?

The casino itself is full of tropical foliage and waterfalls, but the thing the hotel is best known for is its "sand beach"— an 11-acre beach with an artificial wave machine to create actual surf, plus four large pools and one of those lazy floating-river rides that are common in water parks.

Aha! River! The Ayurwaddy River!

But . . . Nope. Nothing. No sign. They could have at least put up a sign that said "Ayurwaddy Lazy Floating River." I mean, if we're gonna do this theme, then let's do this theme.

I end up eating at the Border Grill, one of 13 restaurants in the hotel and the only one that has cafe tables set up by the pool, under the huge palms. Nearby is the "Shark Reef" aquarium. I'm seeing a lot of denim bikinis at the beach, with plenty of artificial mist, sawgrass, earth tones . . . and guayaberas! Someone is offering me the Tequila Menu. Yes, it's one of those "hundred kinds of tequila" places.

In fact, Mandalay Bay has taken the "hundred kinds of" trend to its most ridiculous lengths. Rumjungle, for example, is this disco where waitresses wear teensy-weensy zebra-and-imitation- leather come-and-get-it outfits, and where they have go-go dancers 24 hours a day, duelling giant congas, an open fire pit, waterfalls— and 100 kinds of rum. However, based on the recommendations of my friend Peter Seely, an executive vice president at Trader Vic's International and the world's biggest rum snob, they don't have the nine or ten hard-to-find expensive best rums . . . so what's the point?

Next door to Rumjungle is a place called Red Square, famous for its giant statue of Lenin. When the hotel first opened the statue was controversial— I can't remember why— and so now it's a headless statue of Lenin, which is bizarre but might be the closest they come to a true Mandalay theme, since the rulers of Myanmar do kill Communists. Anyway, the big deal at Red Square is that they have 100 kinds of vodka. So I ordered Berkut. The waitress asked me to repeat it. I said "Berkut, the national vodka of Kazakhstan." I think she thought I was giving her a hard time, but don't advertise 100 kinds of vodka unless you know your vodka, right? They didn't have Berkut.

So anyhow, rum is a Caribbean thing— not much Mandalay there— and vodka is definitely a Russian thing. The Border Grill is Mexican, which is about as far from Mandalay as you can get. The House of Blues is southern black cuisine (I don't think so). I went to the trendy Aureole restaurant to see the 42-foot wine tower; the cuisine here is, of course, French. Trattoria del Lupo is Wolfgang Puck's Italian restaurant, so you have an Austrian pretending he's in Naples. In fact, I kept looking for Burmese food, and the closest they come is China Grill, which is just like the ones in New York and Beverly Hills and Miami, and it's basically Trader Vic's updated for the new millennium, which means a bunch of Chinese stuff mixed with American stuff and served on plates that look like they belong in the Museum of Modern Art. No sign of Mandalay.

Still I pressed on, traversing the faux-flagstone walkways, poking around the Four Seasons, which is somehow part of the Mandalay Bay but has its own separate entrance, pausing to stare at some sculptures that look like giant Amazon-warrior bras floating in a pool. (What would Buddha think?) And, of course, I marveled at the Mandalay's famous Body-Parts Wall, which is sculpted stone body parts, projecting, Hannibal-Lechter-style, from cubbyholes in the wall. They do have body parts in Myanmar, but I think they keep them in secret places in Rangoon, not Mandalay.

The Mandalay's Special Events Center is known for heavyweight fights— Holyfield-Ruiz, Lewis-Tua. Tua! Is he . . . no, he's Fijian. Andrea Bocelli is coming next month. So are Peter Frampton and . . . Pantera! I'm not sure what the national sport of Myanmar is, but I'm pretty certain it's not very well represented in the 17-screen, 300-seat race and sports book.

You know what's really strange about the whole Mandalay theme (or, in my opinion, phantom theme)? This is a hotel that actively goes after high rollers. Eighty per cent of the high rollers in the world are from Asia. And Asians know what Mandalay looks like.

Okay, I give up. Mail on this subject is welcome, because somebody is gonna have to explain it to me. Please.
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© Copyright 2001 United Press International and Joe Bob Briggs