Week 2: Street food tour, weekend trip to Hpa-an
Hello again from Yangon! Apologies for the delayed post- it has been a busy couple of weeks at work finishing up a big comparative constitutional research assignment. I also traveled for work up to the capital, Nay Pyi Taw, to assist with facilitating some workshops for members of Parliament and went on a weekend trip to Hpa-an. This is my first weekend back at home in Yangon and I am planning on going back to the fabric market to visit the tailor, and possibly checking out the commuter “circle train” around the city- provided the rains hold off for the afternoon of course!
But first, I want to fill you in on a street food tour that I took the first weekend I was here, as it was a great experience with delicious food as well as cultural insights from our guide. Downtown Yangon is a bustling place, with hundreds of food stalls around every corner. I wanted to try some local food, but was also wary of catching food poisoning (as befalls many foreigners, because our bodies aren’t protected against the local bacteria - most people say it’s a matter of “when” not “if”), so I sought out a local guide who could point me in the right direction. My fellow intern and I met our guide (who is also a chef!) for our evening adventure.
Our first stop was a group of street stalls where we sampled the classic local dish, mohinga, which is fish soup. It is commonly eaten for breakfast, but also as a snack throughout the day.
Next we crossed the park, where a local company was sponsoring a dance performance, and stopped at a stall where a woman was making a pancake/crepe type dish and we tried both the sweet and savory versions:
Then we continued our stroll over to my neighborhood, and had some classic snack salads as well as the incredibly popular tea, which comes in many combinations of sweet vs savory (at one restaurant I saw over 20 combinations)- I tried “sweet and bitter” and it was delicious. Our guide explained that the roadside tea shops are very popular with men, and they tend to gather here and have some tea and chat, especially in the late afternoons. We asked if the women had a similar place to hang out and he said they usually just meet at home.
It was quite hot outside (the heat index is usually somewhere around 100+), so we were quite happy for the next stop to be a refreshing iced yogurt drink. From there we went to a noodle shop and had garlic noodles, before heading to our final destination- a bbq shop for grilled fish.
As this was quite a bit of food in a short period of time, we were having a hard time finishing everything and were concerned about wasting food. Our guide explained that he would get our leftovers to go, and share them with kids who are sent out to beg on the streets, usually by an employer who then keeps all the money. To combat this practice, our guide’s business also has a social enterprise endeavor- they are trying to document all of the kids on this street who are begging, give them food, and work with the local business to provide education for them.
Street scene
Later that week the monsoons started in earnest. They are a blessed relief from the heat as the rainy season has taken the average temperature down about 10 degrees; it just requires some extra planning as streets can become flooded quickly, and there is also a danger of electrocution because the power lines tend to fall down. By way of example, the view out my window at work is onto a grass yard, and it was flooded to mid-calf length in about 30 mins, with the guys who hang out there “kayaking” on a skateboard!
Here I am with a coworker, posing in the rain for our org’s FB page:
The next weekend, I headed to Hpa-an, a town southeast of Yangon, known for its beautiful cave temples. We took the night bus Friday after work, arriving in Hpa-an at about 3am. We wandered to the hostel, slept for a few hours, and then hired a car to explore. There are about 7 caves in the area and we went to most of them in a day. As the caves are religious sites, we had to take our shoes off before entering, and just be aware that the cave floors are covered in bat guano…
The caves have Buddhist imagery and electric lighting and are a bit surreal. One of the caves was enormous, with a very high ceiling, and distinct rock formations. Walking up the pathway, I was surrounded by a heavy silence, which was occasionally broken by a shriek of laughter as young monks chased each other through the passageways. Proceeding further into the cave, it was too dark and the cave too large to see the ceiling, but the ambient sound was the fast fluttering of hundreds of bat wings.
Most caves were round trip- you would walk/crawl in as far as you could and then go back out. But the largest cave was a one-way loop path, and after a somewhat strenuous hike you exit at a “secret lake” and then hire a boat to take you across the lake and under the rocks:
We also climbed to a visit a monastery that is at the top of a large rock:
We also saw some monkeys! There were quite a few of them and their fur blended in with the rocks, so it was easy to miss them climbing around.
Finally, we climbed to the top of a viewpoint (I’m not afraid of heights but I tried to stop half-way because the ladder seemed to precariously perched on the rock, but I was literally herded up the last few steps by a guide behind me who was calling out my steps “one two three!”) to wait for the “bat cave”- at sundown, thousands of bats fly out of a cave opening. I wasn’t able to get a good picture because of the lighting, but it was an incredible sight. There were people on the ground in front of the cave who banged a gong at intervals so that the bats (who navigate by sound waves) would rise above them and not fly directly into the crowd of bat-watchers!
I will post again in a few days to tell you about my work trip to the capital, Nay Pyi Taw, where we facilitated a workshop on sub-state constitutions for members of Parliament.
-KLP