Night Market

On Monday April 11 we left Thanlwin Guest House. Joan Bastide CDE-representative in Yangon and future co-worker of Lara and future boss of Flo had offered us to stay at his house since he and his family were going on a holiday and the house was vacant. We of course gladly accepted his generous offer and moved all our stuff to Joan’s place in Tarmwe Township (approx. 2km south of Thanlwin Guest House) where we would stay until April 20. In the evening, when temperatures were not at their maximum anymore we took a taxi and went downtown to check out “grill street” a popular tourist attraction on 19^th street. Since the taxi-driver did not know what we were talking about, we asked him to bring us to the nearby Yangon General Hospital. Slightly disoriented we got off the taxi and started walking towards 19^th street. After having passed 17^th and then 18^th street we turned into what we thought was 19^th street, where surprisingly little was going on. On the far end of what was actually Sint Oh Dan Street we finally spotted some market stalls.

Instead of 19^th street we then strolled along the perpendicular Mahabandoola Road which was very busy. Squeezed between the houses and the intense traffic, countless vendors advertised various products: vegetables, (questionable) meat that they tried to keep fresh by occasionally tossing over a few drops of water, flowers, all kinds of fried stuff including insects, clothes and whatnot…

As we were hungry we sat down in one of the crowded street “restaurants”, hardly getting our tall bodies on the tiny plastic chairs. While Lara occupied one of the few free tables, Flo tried to figure out how things work on the buffet which presented a wide variety of food on sticks. After standing in front of the buffet trying to get the attention of one of the vendors for about ten minutes, a kind Myanmar woman noticed Flo’s unsuccessful attempts and handed him a small numbered basket. With that in hand he selected about 15 sticks, mostly things he could somehow identify. After selecting our dinner he brought the basket to the grill station, kept the sign showing the same number and joined Lara at the table. A few minutes later our selection of food was served at the table. With growing skepticism whether it was a good idea to expose our European stomachs to the delicious yet questionably hygienic food we ate dinner, accompanied by the body-shaking horns of the buses passing by only 2-3m away, the chatting of the many people around us and some loud music coming from the opposite side of the street.

After dinner, we again explored the market and lara bought some pants and flowers. Once back at home, we decided to lower the chances of getting sick by drinking a glass of whiskey as a post dinner drink. We don’t know whether it was the whiskey or the food was better than we suspected, but after 24h without getting sick we celebrated the strength of our stomachs by enjoying a cool Myanmar beer.