RANGOON NOTES: WINDS OF OPTIMISM

It’s a late Tuesday morning here in Rangoon, and one of the two days that lie between the birthdays of my two lovely now-grown kids. I’m away for both their birthdays, as I have been for three years now. This year Dom turns 24 and Tashi 21, significant birthdays in different cultures: Of course in the west 21 signifies majority, and there’s still an echo of that importance, even though voting and drinking ages are both 18; while in Chinese and related cultures the zodiac has twelve creatures and twelve years, thus the birthdays that are for years divisible by twelve fall in the same sign as your birth year and always mark the start of another “cycle”. Dom is about to enter his third cycle.

As you know if youve been reading this blog for awhile, I like dates and markers of time and place generally. They’re a kind of geography and context for everything else. And so, with Dom and Tashi both born in late November, this time of year, never particularly significant until twenty-four years ago, has become full of meaning and a good memory marker, as in my question to one of my kids, where were we on your tenth birthday?

This time, this year, is marked by very public significance, the huge positive change in the political climate in Burma. With the loosening of censorship, including the unblocking of many websites, the freeing of some political prisoners (though many remain), the new rules that have permitted and even invited Daw Aung San Su Kyi to engage in the political process along with her party the NLD, and the government’s suspension of the huge Chinese dam project on the upper Irrawaddy - all of these being changes effected in the last three months - it feels as if a logjam has broken and that Burma may genuinely be moving forward into a new more positive era.

In the weekly English language paper the Myanmar Times last week there was an article about a couple of guys who are trying to talk about reconciliation. They have formed a group called Metta for that purpose. One of them was quoted as saying that until now there has been a kind of chess game between the authorities and the opposition which operated in a series of stalemates. But now each side seems to have taken some steps toward flexibility. And now, said this man, the game being played is not chess, with its possibilities for stasis and deadlock, but instead the national game, chinlon.

It’s a great image, for chinlon is a game where a loose number of players keep a woven rattan ball in the air by kicking it with their feet or butting it with their heads, no hands allowed. The goal is to keep it in the air, to keep it moving. If the ball comes to you, you try your best to hit it up and send it on. That’s the point: everyone has a responsbility, everyone is a player, and everyone tries to keep it going.

It’s a lovely metaphor. Chinlon is difficult if you have little or no experience. And we know from our own experience in the west that even with years or centuries of practice we can still make a big mess of democracy. Often we find its complications frustrating, especially when we don’t get what we want. How much more difficult is it for a place where free speech and democratic openness has been outlawed for almost exactly fifty years? Add to that the fact that many people in Burma have paid a huge price in pain and suffering, prison time, and more during these last repressive oppressive years, and it’s easy to see that reconciliation and flexibility will be difficult, and necessary too.

As these weighty and vital-for-the-future-of-Burma questions roll around in my head, and in the hearts and minds of the millions of Burmese who are feeling bouyed by these optimistic changes, we all have to hope that progress continues and doesn’t get high-jacked by conservative elements in the army.

I used the phrase “roll around in my head” just now because an hour ago my head was being pushed and turned and massaged by the knowing iron fingers of a quirky-looking young woman. A friend had told me that one of the best things to do in Rangoon is to have your hair washed in one of the many beauty parlors/hairdressing shops. I’d never tried. So in I went this morning, into a shop in the neighbourhood of my hotel here in the east end. What great advice, thank-you Kyle!

The hairwashing happens as you are lying down on your back, all comfy. After the first warm water, there’s a lathering of the hair and then the massage really starts. She put pressure hard at various points on my scalp then moved to others, then rubbed and stroked, then more pressure. It was fabulous. She also did some work on my neck and shoulders. The arm and hand work, when she pulled on fingers and then squeezed and compressed my hand left me feeling invigorated and smoothed out.

I feel newly minted. And my hair looks so much better that it’s unrecognisable. The total cost was 3000 kyat (pronounced “chat”, for the “ky” combo denotes “ch”), which at 790 to the dollar is less than four dollars. Of course I gave her more...

All this is a reminder that engaging with a place at the level of basic needs and services is a great way to learn new things. I like coming without toothpaste for example, or soap. That way I have an excuse to go into a drugstore and look for what I need, see what’s availabe (and what’s not). But the haridresser was a new idea for me, one that I’ll keep trying in other places too.

In less than two days Hilary Clinton is due in Burma to meet with the current government, and also with Aung San Su Kyi. There will be a huge number of jurnalists covering this trip, a kind of circus is how I imagine the scene. For those of us who are not journalists, we’ll know it’s going on but will only know the details from reading the papers and perhaps watching the news or YouTube. Even though I have no expectation of seeing any of it, I want to stay in Rangoon until after the visit is over. There’s something about the intensity of people’s expectations, and the apparent significance of the visit, that makes me want to stay attentive, to not miss whatever crumbs come my way.

Meantime these days in Rangoon are filled with eating. I am going back to restaurants I know from before, as well as to ones new to me that friends tell me about. There’s always more to learn. And I’m happy to have another chance to compare the recipes in Rivers of Flavor with what I'm eating here. Writing about other cultures, other people’s food, is a responsibility I worry about. I’m sure that despite my best efforts, I will get some things that people in Burma will or would disagree with. I can’t worry about that, only hope that there’s not much to quibble about.

What I do know is that the food in Burma is good, delicious, and that it’s time the rest of the world tuned in to its pleasures and its distinctiveness.

IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT

In this hot humid weather, late on the last Monday in August, I can hear the voices of people outside, voices in the night. They're unaware of being overheard, all those people, I imagine. It makes an odd soundtrack, their interactions. The night is still and heavy, so even though the doors of the house are open front and back, to catch any breeze or hint of freshening air, there's not much coolness happening.

It's not easy to think in this heat, or indeed to do anything very ambitious or elaborate. Ambition just drops away. It reminds me of Ryczard Kapuscinki's book on Africa, in which he talks about how lucky northern peoples are to have cloud and cold weather as part of their year. He's writing about the enervating effects of heat and and of deprivation (inadequate food and/or shelter, etc).

I'm not complaining about this heat. In fact I'm enjoying it. But I also can be grateful that my deadlines are a little elastic and are fairly far off, so slippage, buffer days taken in heat-induced laziness and torpor, feels fine, not scary or highly risky. And when the weather gets cold and harsh this winter, we will be able to look back on this soft weighty hot night with pleasure and longing, and perhaps also a small question: was it really that hot and soft? or did I dream it?

I've been playing around with Burma recipes. A sticky rice treat, a kind of sticky rice bun filled with palm sugar and coconut and fried until golden and crispy on the outside, is my latest pride and joy.

But today I took a break from the doing and went tasting instead. I went with three friends to a small new Burmese restaurant on Bloor Street west of Dufferin. The Mohinga (classic Burmese noodle soup, that comes in various styles) was a bit of a compromise (no banana stem, the broth light on fish, etc) but still recognisable, and it was served with great care and with sparklingly fresh condiments and toppings including coriander leaves and shredded green onion. The outstanding dishes we tasted though were the thokes, or salads, a ginger salad and another, a real emblem of food in Burma, called laphet thoke. It's made of fermented tea leaves that have an enticing tart edge. They are combined with sesame seeds, peanuts, chopped shallots etc, in a distinctive and refreshing salad. Yum.

I need to find a source for fermented tea leaves, a source in North America, so readers of my Burma book, once it's out, can make this delish combo for themselves. I will ask the guy at the restaurant where he gets his, but also, all ideas or suggestions welcome...

On Sunday evening a few friends were over for casual supper. As well as two steask, eye of round (later sliced to make a simple beef salad, Thai-style), I grilled some shallots, tomatoes, and those small round pale green Thai eggplants (the size of limes, with a stem, each of them), about a dozen of them. Then I processed all the grilled veg to a coarse salsa texture in the food processor. A little salt and fish sauce was all it needed, though you could also add chiles. (I left the heat separate, in the form of the hot tart sweet chile sauce I've come to depend on, a classic from Burma. Its base is dried red chiles, and it's my staple condiment these days.) I've never seen those small green eggplants grilled, perhaps because they are mostly seeds rather than very fleshy, but they did make a great salsa, dark red and earthy. Leftovers were a pleasure on fresh rice the next day.

This post is kind of rambling and is spending more time on food than I have been doing lately here. Perhaps it's the heat, addling my brain into short thoughts without much connection?

One thing I do want to mention: I have come to realise that although I can read without reading glasses (as long as the light is good!!!), my reading is now slower because I am not seeing the print as clearly as before. It's time to admit this, to make reading glasses (cheapo's from the drugstore) part of my life, rather than ignored hangers-on in my purse. I don't like being dependent on glasses for this most basic and pleasurable thing we call reading. But I am lucky I can see, and that there are so many books I am eager to read.

Time to head for bed, for a little reading before I pass out in sleep (that lovely deep hot-weather sleep, almost drugged, it feels). Now to find my reading glasses...!...

Happy late summer everyone. And for those of you heading into a school year of packing lunches, my sympathy. It does eventually end, but not soon enough!!

BUFFER DAYS AND SOFT LANDINGS

It feels like such a soft landing! Here I am after a brief less than ninety-minute flight from Rangoon, sitting in comfort and airy privacy in Chiang Mai. Whew!

Many thanks to people who posted comments this last month. I could not get any access to blogspot during my three weeks in Burma, so couldn't post anything. The comments are now up. Thank-you for your patience, all.

Of course while I was away there was a lot of time, on bus rides or train rides or just generally in the course of unstructured days, to think about all the things I might write about here... But I kept coming back to an idea that Dom, my lovely older kid (now a man of twenty-two, so kid is not exactly the word) came up with and talked about in December. It's a concept he calls "buffer days" and for him, and for his brother, both students with heavy work loads, it's about allowing ahead of time for days when you can or will get nothing done.

If you don't allow for buffer days, as a student, say, then you are always in the position of getting less done than you intended: "I wasted Saturday"; or "I planned to read ten chapters but couldn't concentrate so I'm four chapters behind"... etc. You get the picture, I'm sure, since we've all been there, haven't we? If instead you assume that there will be days when you cannot work or cannot make yourself work, then you save yourself from that terrible feeling of always coming up short. I guess, put another way, you make your ambitions more realistic and achievable.

But the concept of buffer days is more powerful than that, I think. It's about generally giving ourselves permission to daydream or change plans or be less than strictly "productive." And surely it's in those in-between spaces that we rest and have creative dreams and new ideas. As parents we need to give our kids the confidence that time out and time off is good, wonderful in fact. And we need to take the advice seriously for ourselves too.

Of course as we age, life seems shorter, is in fact shorter in prospect, so perhaps the idea of "slacking off" or "wasting time" seems even more threatening because there's less time available. But if life is about enjoying what we have and where we are, then we need to give ourselves the buffer day or buffer time to raise our heads from our immediate tasks and laugh or play or talk to our neighbour, or daydream.

Don't we?

Just back from a place where most people have to work hard to maintain themselves, because infrastructure is not there (so water has to be hauled, or the generator turned on when the electricity cuts out, as it does so often, even in Rangoon), I am reminded of how easy life is when we have health, a relatively comfortable living situation, and are not deeply beset by money anxieties or worries about war or violence. It's a privileged situation.

I guess, in talking about buffer days, I'm suggesting that we take more opportunity to enjoy the moment, or pause to talk to a friend or a stranger, rather than perpetually hurrying to get the next thing done.

Talking of taking things slowly, I spent time pottering around on a bicycle in Mandalay. I don't know why I forget, in between times, how pleasurable it is to ride around, in a new place or a familiar one, looking at things. Ivan Illich thought the bicycle was the perfect mode of transport, slow enough that we can see and be attentive to the world as we pass by, yet much easier than walking. I can't disagree. It was a real treat to explore small back roads and lanes (all in a grid pattern, but otherwise unregimented and varied) and come upon little markets or morning vendors or monks making their rounds or...

The street food and food generally in Burma is so interesting and varied that I'm all fired up to start trying to figure out recipes. I promise to post the odd descriptive recipe, once I feel I'm getting somewhere. They range from salads that are in the Southeast Asian idiom, but a distinctively Burmese take, to south Asian dishes like dosa and samosa and dals of all kinds, to inventive sweets, to wonderful simple deep-fried snacks that give texture at every time of day.

Oh, and then there are all the noodle dishes, and the "curries", and, and... It's a rich food culture that I feel I'm only starting to get a small idea of.

Yes, you're right, I'm looking forward already to getting back to Burma... not sure when, but soon, I hope.

Happy Year of the Tiger everyone!

MARKET CONTINUITIES

Another Friday the thirteenth to enjoy!

This will probably be my last blogpost from southeast Asia this season. I am due to fly home on March 17th, in good time to enjoy the equinox in a nothern latitude. I know, I know, it doesn't mean the weather will get warm anytime soon, but that deep thrill of the sun returning, of the light being longer than the dark for six months, is a precious touchstone each year, don't you think?

This morning I went off to the weekly Haw market here in Chiang Mai. It sets up in a parking lot across from the mosque, just a block from Thapae Road. It's been there for years, but I only discovered it a few years ago, so tucked away is its location.

The word 'Haw" is used generally here to refer to a variety of people who are from Yunnan, many of them muslim. The market is most like the market in Mae Sai, the town at the northernmost tip of Thailand, in the so-called Golden Triangle at the Burma boder. There are Shan people, and hilltribe people, and Yunnanese of various kinds, and Burmese too. The food on offer feels like jungle food, wild roots and tubers, greens that are more common in Yunnan than here, and also lots of pickles, Beyond The Great Wall-people-style pickles. There's more than a hint of sour in the air, in fact!

To offset that there are unusual sweets, like black sticky rice disks that are then grilled over charcoal and brushed with a blend of melted palm sugar and sesame (what could be bad?), and "doughnuts" made of cooked black sticky rice shaped into rings and then deep-fried... Yum! I bought some grilled banana and sticky rice, wrapped in little banana leaf packets slightly blackened from the grill, then ended up giving several to a woman who was begging in front of the mosque, her injured foot out before her. (Food feels more constructive than money to me, so when I have the choice that's what I give.)

There are at the market several places where you can sit and eat breakfast. One place has Shan noodle combos, and that's where I ate with some of the people who came to our immersethrough session, last time I was at the market, more than a month ago. This time I went to the other corner, for a different kind of noodle dish.

Fresh back from Burma, I had one of those "duh!!" moments, for the soup over fine rice noodles was a version of mohinga, the Burmese rice noodle soup breakfast. This one was different, for there was no banana stem in it, just tender cooked whole shallots, very like one version I tasted a week ago in Myitkyina. The soup came with a crispy deep-fried chickpea-studded sort of round cracker about four inches in diameter, like but not the same as, the equivalent in Rangoon or Myitkyina. It was delicious, the soup, especially with extra lime squeezed into it, and the crispy disk crumbled on top to give extra texture.

As I walked out of the market with my small purchases (a bag of roasted chestnuts and some cheroots to give to a friend for his birthday this evening; and some black rice doughnuts, why not?), past some hilltribe people selling organic brown rice from huge beautiful baskets, I was reminded that I'm leaving town for awhile, and felt a little downcast. But then I bounced back with the thought that this amazing market, this coming-together of so many people whose origins lie across often-difficult borders, will keep on happening every Friday, in all its wonderful and puzzling variety.

And I have to confess that part of me is already impatient to be back for another breakfast at the Haw market, another immersion in the endless intriguing cultural mysteries of this region.