PS. If you can count how many times I say ‘amazing’ in this vlog, you win a prize (yet to be determined!). 🙂
yangon
Wild Yangon
Wild lunch views |
I remember the exact moment. I was sitting on a tiny pink plastic stool under some make shift umbrella plastic. It was 11.45am. I felt my legs dribbling, matching the matted hair stench from my scalp. I didn’t want to touch my bloated face with my hands, lest the dirt get smeared more fully across my body. I couldn’t resist.
Heaven. |
I picked up my metal spoon and took in a little of the balmy coloured liquid. My eyes flicked open.
Ingredients for the ‘salad’. |
This is called a ‘samosa salad’. It was more of a soup than a salad, but the combinations of salty, crunchy, sour and heat were truly remarkable.
Sugar cane machines & tobacco |
More than remarkable. Bliss. Bliss on a plastic toy chair surrounded by sugar cane juice motors, loud conversations, wide eyed locals staring at the crazy haired white girl, wafts of road water odour and red splashed dirt.
I avoided at all costs looking behind me. I didn’t want the hanging carcass of another animal to disrupt this moment. Because it was this moment, this moment, I fell in love in Yangon.
A garbage truck |
The primary manufacturer of cars in Asia is Japan and the majority of these cars are RHD vehicles. There have been discussions of only allowing LHD vehicles to be imported, but a high ranking police officer says that it is the skill and safe practises of the motorist, rather than the driving side the wheel is on that is the problem of accidents.
This food stall is coming fully onto the road. |
Add to this pedestrians coming out into roads (the pavements are either non-existent, or broken messes of drains and precarious slabs of concrete), bikes and other wheeled contraptions, random stray dogs, and food stalls. Accidents happen all the time, and I saw evidence of this the other day when a car pulled out and hit a motorbike directly in front of me.
More than cute. Everyone uses them. |
What I did find both interesting and unique to Yangon is the sheer numbers of food stalls taking up substantial portions of any and all roads. And everyone eating or drinking at these stalls, on children’s plastic chairs with teapots. It couldn’t be more cute. The freshness of the produce, the succulent, ready to eat fruit, and the betel leaf. Almost as common as the motorbike is a betel leaf stall. The fresh green leaves are spread out, white paste smeared on top, tobacco, herbs and I’m unsure what else. They are meticulously rolled up into thumb nail sized squares and popped into mouths quicker that a fly chasing excrement.
His teeth are pretty good in comparison to what else I saw! |
Bloodied mouths follow, the betel juice dribbling out of smiles and spat… well everywhere. One really has to be careful walking the streets of Yangon! Really careful. The spray of crimson polished every sidewalk, bus and building. The betel leaf is addictive. The consequences of this over time mean crumbling specks of white and black encased in red stained lips.