We spent the first full day wandering towards/by/thru interest points in downtown Yangon. It was hotter than hell, at one point we let our HANGER get the best of us, but it felt amazing to get lost in such a bustling, different city.
Mini-monks on their morning alms route. “Every Buddhist Burmese boy between the age of 7 and 13 is expected to enter the monastery as a novice monk for a period of a few weeks to several months. He has a choice to return to life outside the monastery at any time, or he can stay on as a monk, if he so chooses.” Read more on monks of Myanmar hereTypical side street in downtown YangonLocal BusA look down Anawrahta RoadThere were stands like this on every corner. The man takes a betel leaf, brushes slaked lime on it (limestone heated & mixed with water), adds some crushed betel nut, tobacco and other spices such as cinnamon or nutmeg, whatever the customer orders. He then wraps the leaf into a bitesize little packet so that the consumer can chew it like chewing tobacco. Something in it turns their saliva and teeth a muddy red color, and they have to spit a lot. The first time I saw it I thought people were spitting blood. It’s very common, said to give the user tons of energy , but also extremely carcinogenic. We passed on it. Read more on betel nut hereTypical food vendor – the samosas were a favorite of ours because most were meat-free (read: safe) and stuffed with flavorful potatoes, peas, sometimes minced onion. The vendor is wearing thanaka on her cheeks – a common cosmetic, seen on everyone from children to teen boys to women of all ages. Read more on thanaka here.Also a common sight, this looked and smelled delicious and had we not been afraid of gastrointestinal ramifications we would’ve joined the table. The woman in the yellow shirt is selling various types of meat on sticks to the people that join her at the table. There is a pit of meat juice and once you select your meat bite you could dip it in there and/or enjoy it with any of the other many condiments at the table. We weren’t quite sure what types of meat were for sale here, but Aleksiy guessed it was everything from chicken thigh to organ meat. This made me laugh. I had no idea why there were so many ropes dangling from the top of these apartment buildings, but Aleksiy knew that they were for the tenants above to quickly transact exchanges with the people on the sidewalk below. We later saw one in action, a delivery man attached a small bag of food to the rope and up it went.
Tales of a Southeast Asian Invasion 