Sunni Dawson

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Wild Yangon

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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. 

I quickly tried some of the green, then the chickpeas, and finally the crusty chopped remnants of a samosa.
I felt water coming from behind my eyes. Water joy as I call it. Water joy.
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 street for everyone and everything!
Yangon kinda hits you. Like a wet fish slap across your back. The chaotic roads barely have any sense of order. This is not helped by the fact that the cars (unlike neighbouring countries of Thailand and India) drive on the right side of the road. Now this in itself is not a problem. The problem is that the driving wheels are situated on the right side of the vehicle. 

This means that until a car pulls out into traffic, they cannot see what is coming up behind them. Safe much? Myanmar traffic direction changed overnight in about 1970 by General Ne Win, which most say was to establish distance from the former British rule. People use honking as a means to let people know they are there.
 
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. 

 
You have to be on full alert to walk out into the streets of Burma. Cars, bikes, trishaws, trolleys, horse and carts, garbage ‘trucks’ (large open thatched reed things on wheels with smaller baskets inside) and any manner of wheel based operations with super large stuff balancing on top (or not). And people (including their attached contraptions) go wherever and whenever they want. 
Nerves of blue plated titanium. And constant turning of your head from right to left, making your presence is known to as many moving things around you as possible. No shrinking violets allowed here. You face certain death at any and every moment. 


The peace of the Buddha feels much needed here!
This chaotic state is mesmerising. Completely. It is different from other South East Asian countries I have visited. Fuller, smellier, more random. The closest I could come to comparison is India, but India is, and always will be, on a league of its own. India’s sheer numbers of people give it its prize position of pure chaos of bodies, wheeling vehicles, rubbish, dust and stench…. . There is also one tenth of the amount of begging here as in India. And there are no cows in the midst of homes, streets, railway stations. 
 
But the blending of peoples, religions and ethnic groups is noticeable, being more distinct in its meshing than what I’ve observed in neighbouring countries. Myanmar borders with India and China, and the influences of the migrating peoples are clear. Burmese food and drink is a great example. Chinese tea is served everywhere. The food mixes a lot of Chinese food influences: stirfrys, oil, heat and meat with Indian flavours and spices. I got obsessed with the ‘traditional lentil soup’ which strongly reminds me of dahl, but with crispy onions swimming on top of the soup. Delectable! Samosas and dosa on are prevalent on roadside stalls. Did someone mention DOSA???? 
 
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.



In my next post I will discuss some of Yangon’s scintillating sights.

 

Shrine of remembrance for Aung Sun assassinated in 1947

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