Budget travel... Yangon airport to downtown

In progress

Meals in Yangon

In progress

Lunch (3400 kyats) after check-in. My first taste of Burmese food. Salty, sweet, spicy, yummy!

Street food in Chinatown. Spring rolls (500 kyats) and clay pot noodles (1500 kyats).

Pastor Naing brought us for lunch at a Burmese restaurant.

Back to Chinatown for dinner again. Meal with grilled fish and friend kangkung for 5600 kyats.

Nasi briyani at Nilar Restaurant. Very clean and air-con restaurant, with excellent service. A good getaway from the Yangon heat. The falooda (ice-cream sweet drink) was great. 

Returned there a second time for mutton paratha.

 Willow Inn served pretty good breakfasts.

Noodle soup at the highly-rated 999 Shan Noodles Restaurant. So so only lah. Their wantan has very little fillings.

Ms Aye, the daughter of Dr San an expatriate doctor in University Sabah Malaysia, brought us for dinner at Shan Yoe Yar, a classy restaurant specialising in Shan food. Wonderful salads they served.

A supper round of falooda after a wonderful dinner.

Was so glad that I had a bowl of mohinga (500 kyats) at Bogyoke Market before leaving Yangon.

Myanmar colleagues recommended many other food stuffs, but I didn't have time to savour all. Next trip, maybe, hopefully.

Street food in Yangon

The streets of Yangon were teeming with life, and food. Hanging out with friends at a roadside stall while gulping down a meal seemed to be a national pastime. In comparison, eating shops are hard to come by, probably due to high rental costs downtown (just guessing).

Springy-noodle stall just beside our inn, packed during lunch time. 

Chill out with an icy drink on a hot afternoon.

A stall selling the popular mohinga (Myanmar laksa), said to be the national dish of Myanmar.

Fried coloured food. Note the quails.

Pig innards hotpot. The boiling keeps the germs away, hopefully.

Kneading doughs for deep-fry.

Roti canai, cooked over charcoal fire. Hardly seen anybody cooking with gas.

Pineapples were in season.

Watermelons were huge!

An assortment of sweet snacks.

Orthopteran bites.

A reason why I had reservations sampling street food in Yangon... besides the dusts, flies, splashes and betel spits. Fear that my Malaysian guts couldn't cope. 

"Myanmar people like oily food. It could be that oily cooking enables the food to keep longer, and be more resistant to flies and its likes."

A visit to the children's home

Bobby asked us to pass a sum of donation to Pastor Naing Hung, who started a children's home in the suburb of Yangon.

Due to heavy traffic downtown, the 20km trip took over an hour. 

The children's home in Dagon City, located in the middle of a large paddy field. Dagon University can be seen nearby.

Handing over the donation to the home.

Pastor Naing believes that education was the only way for under-privileged children to get out of the cycle of illiteracy, poverty and exploitation. In their home village, children would have to work to earn their family's keep, and miss out on an education. So the pastor brought them out to stay in the children's home, so that they can go to a nearby school and focus on getting an education.  

At the moment, the home houses 12 students and a few helpers. The home is dependant on an electrical line from its neighbour... so just ONE lamp lights up the entire home. 

A very basic room shared by the guys.

Sheet metal walls and roof. Simple kitchen with bare essentials, feeding a crowd of fifteen or so. 

Looking out into the neighbourhood. 

The children would cycle to school each day. Pastor was planning put a roof over the adjacent land, so that it could be used for tuition, and protect the bicycles from shine and rain. 

Thatched houses in the neighbourhood.

A simple, bare basic home... yet giving hope and a future to under-privileged children. 

I left the home with mixed feeling... amazed at the tough children growing up in such frugal conditions, and feeling guilty for taking my modern home for granted. We who enjoy the comforts of modern life, should be thankful and consider sharing some of our resources to help these children. 

If you help the poor, you are lending to the LORD - and he will repay you! (Proverbs 19:17) 

Whoever gives to the poor will lack nothing, but those who close their eyes to poverty will be cursed. (Proverbs 28:27)

On the way back, Pastor made a brief stop at his church and Bible School.

The Believer Church.

There are 200 plus students at the bible school.

Pastor Naing showing us around the bible school. 

The teachers' quarters.

Pastor Naing, his wife and brother-in-law. They are expecting a baby in August.

The view from the pastor's home.

On the way back to downtown, we made a brief stop at Aung San Suu Kyi's residence. Nothing much to see from outside... just a tall grey gate, high walls and barb wires.

Pre-holiday weekend

There was Tamu Besar in the KPD tamu ground today. Brought the kids there to do some shopping. Good to get them out of the house and see the farmers's market. The tamu sells the best satay around KK, at 60 sen per stick. Also, we loved the ayam golek grilled chicken.

Ducklings on sale. Flowers in full bloom, ready for display during CNY.

Even goats! Hey, maybe to coincide with the Chinese lunar Year of the Goat.

Came back to see little boy playing a paper box, imagining it to be a lion dance head. 

Experiment today on the Philips pressure cooker... random mix... lotus root, corn, peanuts, red dates, chicken bone, cuttlefish. Pretty good.

Will be flying back to Seremban tomorrow for CNY.