BURMA FOOD & TRAVEL GUIDANCE & ADVICE

It’s a week plus since I flew into Toronto from Hong Kong on the last leg of my journey from Chiang Mai. And then I left town for two plus days of escape, so that really I feel I have just re-entered. Those first re-entry impulses: laundry, cleaning the kitchen, looking at bills and other mail, have now been exercised and it’s time to get down to work.

Because of the BURMA book, and because a lot of people have decided to head to Burma in the last year, I’ve had a steady stream of people asking for advice. Mostly they are very nice with their requests: “some ideas about where to stay, where to eat, what to eat…” is the usual request.

And so here I am writing a very straight blogpost, to give some basic info, opinionated, of course, on my views of what where when and how? to travel and eat in Burma. The advice will fall out of date fairly quickly at the rate things are changing, but still the restaurant names should mostly be useful.

Before I get started, I’d urge any of you who are interested in local food to have a good close read of my BURMA book. I’m not talking about the recipes, though they can be very useful as a guide in a new country and culture. (For example it's useful if you understand about shrimp paste as an element of flavour, umami-giving, and come to appreciate just how those curries and salads are made.) No, I’m talking about the section in the front that gives general information about the structure of meals and eating through the day, as well as the annotated bibliography at the back of the book. 

 And so I am assuming that you know that the main meal of the day, centred around rice, is usually eaten at noon. Go looking for a good Burmese or Shan restaurant for your noon meal, and be prepared to eat widely and well. The snack on the street or in noodle shops or tea shops the rest of the time.

The exception to this occur mostly in Rangoon, where there are a number of restaurants that serve big rice-based traditional meals in the evening, mostly I gather because they have become used to serving ex-pats or people eating in an ex-pat pattern.

The general rules for looking for food in another culture or place are always:

Notice what time of day people eat particular dishes or kinds of meals, and then copy them.

Go looking for food markets in the early morning.

See if there’s an evening market to explore.

If you taste something you don’t like, ask yourself why you don’t like it. Then try to figure out why or how it tastes good to others. It’s a useful exercise in understanding the elements of a cuisine and traditional eating and cooking patterns and practices.

All right, now here’s a small list of nice eating etc ideas, mostly about Rangoon:

In Rangoon/Yangon, be sure to stay somewhere reasonably central so you can walk around; tho taxis work fine)

Yegyaw Market in the east end (the extension of 49^th Street north of Bogyoke Road), is small and easy to get hold of. Once you’re familiar there (try the fried doughnuts of many kinds) then you might want to poke along the huge market downtown, that runs south from the Kali Temple that is on Mahabandoola; the street market open-air part is the most fun, but in the rabbit warren of the market building there are amazing sights.

Scott Market (also known as Bogyoke Market) is for souvenirs, pearls, jade, etc shopping. Closed on Mondays. Check out Yoyamay upstairs in the SE corner, for amazing textiles; and next door the lacquerware shop, for antique lacquerware. A great place.

I love tea shops, and especially I love Mercury Tea Shop, on Anuwratha Road on the south side at about 46^th Street. Go in the morning for flatbreads and beans; or have a dosa…I like their black coffee (it comes with a wedge of lime). Skip the steamed dim sum type things.

Other Rangoon noodle stops include any busy-looking mohinga stand out on the street on Mahabandoola or Anuwratha or a sidestreet, especially west of 40^th Street; or else a vendor selling noodle salad. The latter will have a net-covered display of all kinds of noodles, including pale yellow “tofu” that is a Shan tradition and is made from chickpeas or other beans, and is, like the rice noodles, completely gluten-free. Noodle salads are a common and delicious snack at any time of the day, dressed with lime juice, roasted chopped peanuts, herbs, chile powder, and lots more.

And then there’s Osaka, a great little noodle shop open 5 am to 5 pm, on Bo Myat Thun Street, about 1 ½ blocks north of the railway line (four blocks or so north of Bogyoke Road). Order the shwe daung khao swe, coconut milk sauce-bathed pork on home-made (made in the shop) noodles, with broth alongside and great condiments; and the people there are very sweet.

For a spectacular sit-down meal, on any evening but a Sunday, head to Myit Sone (means “the confluence”, as in the confluence of the Irrawaddy River in Kachin State) for a Kachin feast. Have the pounded beef, a Kachin fish curry, potatoes, the steamed mixed vegetables…anything the sisters suggest to you. It’s a completely different cuisine, and a real discovery. Myit Sone is at 22 Baho Road, opposite the Chinese embassy.

The other evening place to eat, this time central Burmese food, is Feel Myanmar near a number of the embassies and very close to downtown (124 Pyidaungsu Yeiktha Street). You can pick out your dishes, food is made fresh all day, including for the evening; there is a huge range of choices, a relaxed generous vibe, and lots of flexibility. And if you’re fine with being in a tourist-oriented place, the Padonmar Restaurant on Kha Yae Bin Road has a lovely garden setting, a pleasure in the evenings in dry season.

Most other big rice meals are to be found at noontime, when traditionally the food is very fresh-made. Try Aung Thuka near the Savoy Hotel, or Khaing Khaing Kyaw (the latter takes reservations). For Rakhine (Arakan) food, with lots of delish seafood options, head to Minn Lan at lunchtime (closed the 23^rd of every month). There are a number of branches of Khaing Khaing Kyaw and of Minn Lan; your hotel can help you find the closest one.

If you head out of town, I have a few recommendations. Mostly, look for the early markets; ask about market days and schedules. And be sure to find a stall with a good view and sit down for some mohinga or other noodles.

In Bagan, eat your noontime rice meal at the famously excellent open-air place under the tree in Old Bagan (and rent a bicycle to get around). Be sure to buy the local palm sugars (flavoured with coconut or with sour plum powder) and also the tamarind flake candies; you’ll be happy to have a stash to give away to friends.

In Yaunshwe (Inle Lake) where the markets operate on a five day schedule, get yourself informed about the places and days. Eat at the markets, on dry land or on the lake. Look for the delicious rice steamed (in a lotus leaf) with mashed potato and fish; and the darker coloured steamed rice that has been mixed with blood and then cooked. Try the steamed rice dumplings and ask around for peanut soup. Out in the lake, Heritage Restaurant is an upmarket elegant setting that serves an excellent lunch; reservations recommended (ask your hotel for help). The Four Sisters guest house by the river has a good dinner, simple grilled fish usually, prepared with a light hand; quirky people but nice.

In the rest of Shan State, Hsipaw for example, and also in the far eastern Kengtung (ChiangTung) north of the Golden Triangle, eat Shan noodles for breakfast: rice or egg noodles with a tomatoey meat sauce and fresh greens and herbs on top.

And for hotels etc in Rangoon and elsewhere:

In Rangoon I stay at the nice-people-but-not-beautiful Eastern Hotel on Bo Myat Thun; the East Hotel seems OK too, more central, but is more expensive .

In Bagan I stayed a couple of years ago at the Aung Mingalar (near the bus station) and liked its location and the people; reasonable price too. The market in Nyaung U is great, and busy, but now there are touts because of greater tourism. Just ignore them and head for a noodle soup near the back. Take a trip to Pakkoku, by boat or road (now that the bridge is built) where things are quiet and not at all touristed in the market.

In Yaunshwe (Inle Lake) the Gold Star is another hotel in the unfancy but perfectly nice category, and not too expensive. It’s also a great location, an easy walk to everywhere; rent a bike to excursion around. The same goes for the Four Sisters, which is small and less money than Gold Star.

In Hsipaw, Mr Charles still seems to be the best place; in Myitkyina, in Kachin State, if it ever opens again to travellers, the YMCA is very basic and a great place for conversation about all kinds of news; in Hpa’an in Karen State, the Soe Brothers is another very basic warm-hearted landing place; in Mrauk U (another place that is closed at the moment) plan to stay four or five days at the Prince Hotel, rent a bicycle, and take your time.

Enjoy! and take things as slowly as you can...

A SURFEIT OF RICHES TO ABSORB & APPRECIATE

I'm feeling full-to-bursting, as we used to say after a huge meal when I was growing up. But at the moment it's not my gut that's full but my head and my mind's eye and perhaps my heart too. I'm just back from Burma. It's a pleasure to be back in the ease of Chiang Mai, but I feel a pang too. I'm missing the complexities and textures of my days in Burma.

I think iit's a good sign when I'm not ready to leave a place. That means I've dug in and found a comfort zone, taken local patterns into myself and in some small way become immersed and part of it all. What a luxury to be able to do that, in even a small way, in another country and culture. I've made friends in Burma, in Rangoon in particular, and learned my way around the city, especially many of the markets and small restaurants. It's hard to remember how little I knew and how intimidating Rangoon felt to me two and a half years ago.

Of course, on the other hand, as I've said before, the more I learn about Burma and the food cultures and other aspects of culture and daily life there, the more I realise I don't know. And that's healthy too, if sometimes unsettling!

On one front I've made some very slow progress: I've been slowly working on my literacy in Burmese. Because I'm an on again-off again kind of student of language, on this last trip I found myself sometimes sitting down for several hours practicing Burmese letters, and other times not being able to make myself open my notebook. But always there was a pleasure in trying to decipher, syllable by syllable, the street signs and menus and other writing I came across each day. The letters in the Burmese alphabet are beautiful, rounded and curving with the occasional squared off line, just fascinating to the eye.

The advantage of this nibbling away at the alphabet is that now I understand why Burmese is transcribed into English in the way it is. For example, the word for the currency is written "kyat" in our (Roman) aphabet and is pronounced "chat", approximately. It doesn't seem to make sense, until you learn that the combination of the Burmese letters that are pronounced "k" and "y", when written together in Burmese, becomes the sound "ch" (roughly). Aha! It's just like the English combo's "ch" and "sh". There's no rule that says that an h sound after an s should produce the English "she"; it's just a convention.

And all this leads me to think about our conventions and assumptions about ourselves and others. We assume before we know other languages that "sh" is always pronounced as we pronounce it in English. We don't understand why "ky" should mean "ch". SImilarly we don't understand why we shoud take our shoes off in the house or at the temple, when we are in say Thailand or Burma or India. From the other side, people from those countries are horrified at the idea that we DON'T take our shoes off. How dirty! they think (and I agree... but that's another topic, street dirt in the house...).

We also assume things about other people, all the time.. and often we don't get to find out how wrong we are. Today I had the pleasure of meeting a remarkable person (he would not characterize himself this way I'm sure) who is not "categorizable." I met him at the Irawaddy, the newspaper of Burmese people in exile, where he works as a writer and editor. He was imprisoned as a very young man, a student, for eight years. I can't imagine what it's like to be in prison, let alone to lose eight years of your life, at a young age. Yet here he is, doing productive work, not wearing bitterness on his sleeve but instead conducting himself with grace and humour and dignity. He has not lost his self-respect.

While I was in Dawei, a town in southern Burma that is sleepy now but about to have a deep-sea port developed nearby, I had another encounter with a remarkable person. In fact, I could say that I met a number of interesting people who are all connected to this amazing man, a monk who is a "muscular buddhist", you might say. What I mean is that rather than study and meditate only, he also believes that he should engage with trying to alleviate suffering. So on the one hand he gives public talks on the dharma almost every evening, and on the other he works to build schools and hos[pitals in underserved areas of Burma. He's also managed to connect to gifted doctors living in other countries; they donate weeks of their time and of their students' time, to working at the hospitals, treating patients and training local staff.

It's a brilliant strategy, for he is doing good not by being a political or elected person, but just by taking direct action, acting as a force for good in the country.

The organization is called Sitagu, and the monk, as a teacher and leader, is known as the Sitagu Sayadaw. Do go have a look at a website about it all, at http://sitagu.org/burma/

Full-to-bursting is how I started this blogpost, and writing about just a fraction of the thoughts this trip has given me makes me feel even fuller. More later. For now, as I head north for a couple of days with a friend to try to visit the part of Shan State immediately north of Mae Sai, in particular the old trading town and Shan principality of Chiang Tung (often written Kengtung in Burmese contexts), I'll go on trying to digest this richness... And I will remind myself again of how lucky I am to be able to engage with this part of the world, with all its complexities.

AND ON A FOOD NOTE: I went to Dawei for many reasons, one of them to taste Dawei mohinga, a uite different take on the dish. There the soup is much thicker than in Rangoon, more chile hot, with large pieces of lovely fresh fish in it, and some galangal too. One of the people with Sayadaw was a man from Rangoon who gave me the names and locations of several mohinga restaurants/stalls in Rangoon, as well as of a place called Osaka that makes a brilliant noodle dish called Shwe Taung Khao Swe. Delish! Now to figure it out for the Burma book!

MORNING PLEASURES & A BOOK TO GET ABSORBED BY

Sometimes a breakfast is so perfect that it’s hard to imagine why anyone would want to eat anything else but that particular combo in the morning. There’s great bread lightly toasted and eaten with cold butter and home-made marmalade, and good coffee alongside; there’s my home-standard leftover rice with fried greens and fried egg on top flavored in various ways; there’s mohinga streetside in Burma somewhere, with fresh little crunchies to be stirred into a perfect broth and tender noodles; and today there was “jok”, what we in the west often call by its Hindi name “congee”, or else more prosaically call rice porridge.

I was out for a short jog at about seven this morning, the sun still hidden by dense mist on the eastern hills. (Tashi just asked me on the phone if running here in Chiang Mai is very different from running in Toronto (apart from the snow of course, he said). The answer is yes and no. Yes, it’s different because the sidewalks are rough and uninviting so I often run on the street, dodging oncoming cars when there are any, and watching for bumps and obstacles when I am forced onto whatever passes for a sidewalk. And yes, it’s different because the people who are out on the street give me a smile or a wave as I trot past, in a friendly inviting companiable way, whereas in Toronto I am as invisible as every other jogger. And no, it’s not different in a basic way: I am still stuck with myself, my thoughts and anxieties and uninteresting morning ponderings, including my thoughts about whether to take a break and walk rather than huffing and puffing on at a slow jog, all sweaty!)

A guy I met recently here told me that he does a brisk walk very early, before dawn, past the moat and north a bit to the “stadium” that is used by the PhysEd Department at Chiang Mai University. He goes round the track four times before heading home. I’d never been there and so decided to head out in that direction this morning. I took back streets and found my way to the stadium, ran once around, and then took a winding exploratory route back. Fairly close to home I came on a street-side stall run by an older couple, with pots on the boil, a sign that said “JOK” in Thai, and a couple of tables with plastic stools set out on the edge of the road.

I ordered a bowl of jok to eat there (the person ahead of me took his away in a heavy plastic bag), “sai kai, ka” - with an egg please. The woman took a large ceramic bowl in one hand and gave the huge pot a stir with the ladle in her other hand. She scooped up a full ladle of steaming hot smooth white rice porridge and poured it into the bowl, then set it down while she broke a fresh egg onto it. Then on went several more half-ladles-ful of hot jok, some pork broth with a few meat balls, and a generous sprinkling of chopped green onion and slivered ginger. The egg of course poaches in the middle of the dense hot porridge, so the trick is to leave it without stirring too much, until it has cooked enough for you. I like my yolk liquid and my white set, so it take several minutes.

As I waited for the egg to cook, I explored the table condiments: plain vinegar, powdered dried red chiles, sugar, and rice vinegar with a paste of minced green chiles and a little coriander in it. There was also a bottle of soy sauce and a full shaker of white pepper powder. I spooned on some of the vinegar-chile paste and then started to turn the thick soupy porridge, turning the edges in to the centre. Finally, a first spoonful went into my mouth, hot and steamy. Fabulous. And from there it continued, the egg yolk a rich country-egg orange, the strands of ginger warming on the tongue, and the mild green chile paste too... There’s something about the smooth thick texture of jok that is comfort food, like baby food anywhere perhaps?

It’s coolish here right now, especially in the morning, and so, though when I sat down I was hot from running, with sweat patches on the knees of my pants and on my back, I was already feeling chilled by the time the bowl of jok was in front of me. The hot soupy porridge warmed me right back up, a gentler version of the direct hit of hard liquor, hitting my gut and then travelling out to my extremities... Perfect winter food.

As I walked on home I thought about this question of perfect breakfast and wonderful streetfood. The thing is, a simple perfect breakfast at home is easy, manageable, but this streetfood, whether it’s mohinga or jok or some other wonderful breakfast, is not so simple. I mean it takes expertise. Part of the pleasure in eating it is that someone else has made it, and made it beautifully. I can just ask for it and it miraculously appears.

Yes, I would be happy to make good jok for myself and others. But that extra treat of being taken care of, especially when it comes to comfort food, adds a layer of pleasure that’s a whole other ingredient.

And speaking of ingredients, I have a new strategy for jet-lag, something I’ve fallen into by chance. Just before I left Toronto last Friday a close friend lent me her copy, soft cover, but still fat and very attractive, of the 2009 Booker Prize-winning Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel. It went into my checked luggage, as a book to savour rather than to glance through junk-book fashion on the plane. And so it was waiting for me when I unpacked, and into it I dived, head first.

An engaging beautifully written slightly challenging (keeping the names straight and trying not to miss out any of the lovely details) book is a great companion and walking-staff kind of assistance for the jet-lagged traveller, I discovered. I could read it without falling asleep, so I could stay up until a reasonable bedtime. And it could entice me out of an afternoon nap, when needed, so I stayed on track.

Beyond these rather dreary practicalities, it is the most fabulous book. My friend’s spouse had said he was irritated by the dangling “he”, for the author doesn’t dot every “i” in the course of the narrative, so who does “he” refer to in this sentence? is sometimes the reader’s question. But I found it clean, a wonderfully immediate read, with no obtrusive author’s voice in the way, no knowingness to mar the intimacy I had with the scenes as they unfurled in my mind’s eye.

It is truly stunning.

Of course there’s a wild disconnect between the court of Henry the Eighth (the novel is centred on the amazing Thomas Cromwell, who rose to power in that era) on the one hand, and present-day sub-tropical Chiang Mai on the other. That gap between the world I was transported to by the book and the place I was in when I raised my eyes made my dreaming quite disorderly and wild! But why not? since jet-lagged sleep can be so trippy anyway...

In ingredient terms, then, the recipe for long-distance travel includes melatonin (which I always forget about, but which really helps many people get to sleep, even when their sleep-cycle is out of wack); drinking lots of water on the plane and taking it easy with alcohol; having a comfy place to sleep your first few nights after arrival; and now, the last ingredient, having a fascinating book to sink into when you can’t do much else besides read or sleep and you don’t want to sleep just yet.

But I’d also say, don’t wait for a trip to get started on Wolf Hall. And if you can, read it slowly, luxuriating in the tapestry of it all and the style too. I rushed through it, and wish I had it to read all over again for the first time. Maybe in a year I’ll reread it, in a more leisurely way, and reimmerse. Now that’s something to look forward to.

Happy full moon everyone!

LIVING IN THE NOW, NOW

'What a beautiful clear sunny morning!' I was thinking as I set off on my bicycle today to meet a friend for breakfast. But somehow out on College Street as I was trying to set off when the light turned green, my foot slipped off the pedal, with my full weight on it, and though I managed to get it on the ground, rather than falling over, the pedal scraped and banged up my shin pretty thoroughly. I swore a little then pedalled to our meeting place, where I asked the cafe cook and owner for some ice to sooth the swelling. I already had a goose egg on my shin, as well as scrapes oozing blood. The ice worked: now an hour and a half later the goose-egg is down and all I have is a dull ache (and unsightly scrapes that will take awhile to heal).

All it takes is a moment's inattention for our luck to change, our judgement to be off-key, our fate to turn. Examples abound. A friend told me this week about her near-drowning a couple of weeks ago. The elements there were first, a decision to try swimming across a lake that was wider than she realised, and second, a weaker swimmer with her, who needed to cling on, which started them both sinking... until my friend passed out. Luckily a third person was with them, a strong swimmer, who got them both back to shore safely. It's shocking to think that they might easily have drowned. Events can turn on a hair sometimes.

Reminders like this are painful jolts: We can get hit by a bus, or drown in a lake, tomorrow, or any time. There are no guarantees. And so there's no point worrying overly about the future, though we are inclined to (see my last week's blog about over-anticipation and min-maxing). Of course we need to anticipate it and take some precautions, as a navigator steers a ship around a coming headland or shoal, but we also need to remember that since each day could be our last, we need to live in the now as much as we can, to enjoy it, and to take responsibility for ourselves and others, in the moment.

Like the rest of life, it's a balancing act. And the attentiveness we bring to it gives life edge and meaning.

I guess part of the balancing act involves being in the moment and engaged and also capable of stepping outside it and seeing context or the wider view. It's a process a little like working with a zoom lens, focussing in on the immediate and then going wide for the wide-angle view, where each element becomes smaller but their interconnectedness is more the focus.

These are July musings, in the luxury of some of the best summer weather I can remember (we could do with more rain, but we've had rain some evenings and sun in the days, so the gardens are way ahead). It's time to enjoy local tomatoes, the purple "green beans" hanging on the bean plants out in the garden (so beautiful!), the raspberries and blackberries at the market, the last of the cherries...

And as I explore the homecooking traditions of Burma, I'm engaging with fish. (In this warm weather I leave doors and window open, so there's a breeze that carries cooking smells away. The house and garden have a very tropical feel these days, seamlessly connected by soft air and greenness flowing through the house.)

This week has been full of soups, fish broth for sour soups (there's sour soup with vegetables in it at almost all lunch tables in central Burma, delicious and refreshing in the heat), for a soup with lemongrass and ginger, and for a mohinga from the Rakhine coast (where food is more chile hot, the west coast south of Bangladesh). I also messed around with a chickpea soup, cooking chickpeas (garbanzos for some of you) unsoaked and comparing that to the cooking time if they are soaked overnight. it does indeed make a difference, soaking them. It knocks an hour or more off the cooking time. And by the way, the soup is satisfying, easy to make, a keeper for sure. (It's flavored with minced shallots fried in oil, and with lemongrass etc.)

Speaking of Burma, I had a letter from a guy in Indianapolis today who is looking for Chin recipes. The Chin are one of the cutures/ethnicities that live in Burma, mostly in Chin State, in the northwest. He says there are 6,000 refugees from Burma in the Indianapolis area, among them Chin. There is even a Chin restaurant. He wanted to know if I had any Chin recipes, for he is due to cook for the refugees in a few weeks. I wrote back to say that he is in a better place than me to gather and know about Chin food. it makes me want to head to Indianapolis this fall, to eat and ask questions.

In Burma Chin State is off-limits to foreigners. My only contact with Chin people was at several Chin villages in northern Rakhine State, up river from Mrauk U.

Sorry to ramble on and on... thinking out loud. Thinking about refugees who have had to leave their homes and landscape and start afresh, with many hardships in between, is a good reminder that our short-term aches and pains, or worries, are small indeed.... And it's also a reminder of how resourceful and resiliant human beings can be when survival is the issue.

Happy summer everyone.

SUMMER FOOD: A further thought on my "classic" potato salad, described a few posts ago: Boil new potatoes and several sweet potatoes, whole and unpeeled. When they are cool enough to handle, peel them and chop into large bite-sized pieces. Steam cook or parboil some wing beans (also called asparagus beans, tua plu in Thai) or some green beans, then chop them into the potatoes. Then chop fresh herbs from the garden and stir them into an olive oil-vinegar (or lime juice) and salt (or soy sauce) dressing. I have shiso, basil, tarragon, mint, and flat-leafed parsley, all jumbled together, so that the dressed salad yields a surprise with each mouthful. And it's beautiful, with green and dark red (the shiso) herbs, orange and white potatoes, and the green of tua plu or beans... A great potluck dish, as I've said before!

WE DANCE BETWEEN THE NEW AND THE KNOWN

Four weeks ago I was writing a last post here before leaving for three weeks in Burma. The moon was full. We're back again to a full fat moon, ripening in the sky each night. How wonderful.

I headed out this morning to the large wholesale market, the biggest market in Chiang Mai, called Muang Mai. It’s an easy ten or fifteen minute walk from here, right across the road from the American consulate, which is a kind of wild juxtaposition. (We took the immersethrough people there the first day. It took us about two hours to get our small bit of shopping done, so distracting and engaging was the market, and so full of questions and curiosity generally were our lovely people.)

This morning at Muang Mai, in the course of helping a guy pick up a fallen crate of young coconuts (they roll far, of course), I dropped my cash purse without noticing. Five minutes later, in another part of the market, I hear a woman call to me: she’s rushing up with my wallet in her hand to return it to me. The kindness of strangers is always a gift; I felt so grateful to her.

Markets aren’t always that forgiving to the careless, nor is daily life in general for that matter. And I was extra lucky to not have realised my loss, so that I never had a moment’s worry, just a flooding feeling of gratitude that warmed me for the rest of the morning.

Anyway, because I am leaving soon, I’ve already started that subtle process, both conscious and unconscious, of saying farewell to places and people and patterns of thinking and seeing. Muang Mai and Wararot Market, the old big downtown market are both important Chiang Mai anchors for me. I can only imagine how much a part of life and personal landscape they are for people who work there or who shop at the market every day.

As I was walking from Muang Mai across the river to get to Wat Kate, another place that goes back a long way in my Chiang Mai history, I had one of those kaleidescoping-memories moments, where flashes and glimpses of places and people from different times come bursting into the mind’s eye. And all that made me think about the tension or balance between the pleasures of the familiar and the urge to seek out the new.

We all live with these opposite pushes and pulls. And we respond to them differently, each of us, and our response changes over time. For example I sometimes think that turning points in our lives are connected to a need or yearning to move ourselves to some other point on the spectrum between the extremes of, at the one end, seeking the all-new, and at the other, staying securely in the all-familiar.

And at different points in the day, even, we have more energy for the new, or on the other hand, a sense of vulnerability or a longing for comfort that makes us seek out the familiar. That need for the familiar is probably why, after Muang Mai and Wat Kate, I found myself in the basement of Wararot Market having a bowl of kanom jiin, fine white rice noodles topped with broth. I chose a coconut-milk-rich fish ball-laden broth today. On the table were the usual generous plates of fresh herbs and raw vegetables, as well as pickled greens and lightly pickled beansprouts with chopped green onion. The familiar process of adding flavourings and turning and stirring them in is a ritual, a reassuring and calming way to start a meal.

Kanom jiin is the Thai equivalent or close cousin of the family of Burmese dishes called mohinga. Like kanom jiin, mohinga can be a morning start to the day, or an evening bowl of comfort, or a meal in between (though lunch, for most people in Burma who have the choice, is usually a main meal of rice with many “curries” and delicious side dishes of many kinds).

Speaking of morning foods, yesterday at the wonderful Haw market (only on Friday mornings, opposite the mosque just off Thapae Road here in Chiang Mai) I had a farewell bowl of the Shan specialty, which is often called “tofu” by the Shan and Burmans, and is a thick delicious chickpea-based soup, pale yellow, that goes over kanom jiin/mohinga noodles. The soup is then topped with flavourings: a little palm sugar water, ground peanuts, coriander leaves, fried garlic oil, dried chiles if you wish, and there’s no limit or rule about what else you might like to include. Yum. It’s one of the recipes I’d like to figure out in the next few months...

I was with Fern and Melissa, having a coffee to recover from our soups (Fern had had mohinga with lots of chiles on top) when Robyn and Dave turned up. They live in Malaysia and are here for ten days or so working on several Chiang Mai-related articles. Robyn (Robyn Ekhardt) has a wonderful blog you will want to explore called Eating Asia, and Dave (David Hagerman) takes the photos. They’re people you’re happy to take anywhere, but they’re of course especially fun to eat with...

And that’s my plan for my remaining time here, to enjoy each moment: savour the present and not worry about the future.

FRESHLY LANDED AND WIDE-EYED

There's a white cotton blessing string tied three times around my right wrist. As I sit here at my little white laptop (so pleasant to be back with familar tools!) it is in view, an ongoing reminder of Burma. I was given it at a monastery - "paya" is the Burmese term - called Ta-ma-nga that in Burmese style is built on a hilltop, with a steep long flight of stairs leading up the wooded hillside. It's about 40 miles southeast of Hpa'an, in Kayin (Karen) State. The monk who presided there until his death a few years ago was revered for his wisdom, and respected too for his firm support of Aung San Suu Kyi. His portrait is often pasted up in the front of busses, along with a buddha photo or two, and the monastery is a busy pilgrim place and also somehow remarkably peaceful.

Right now I'm still in "just landed" mode, with a jumble of impressions that will in time I hope get a little more sorted out. The photos will help, as I sort through them, and now that I have a few words of Burmese in my head (and more noted down phonetically in my notebook but not yet pounded into my brain!), I can somehow "replay" the texture of encounters and the feel of the street much better than after my last trip.

It's such a slow (and interesting) process, getting a little familiar with another food culture. And in Burma, with its diversity of peoples, from Rakhine and Karen to Bhama and Mon, to Kachin and Shan of many kinds, the picture is wonderfully complex. That's so even before you get to the foods that originate in the Indian subcontinent and are now staples in Burma, subtly transformed in many cases, from their original model. I'm talking about biryani and dosa and porota and paratha and more. Fun!

It was a treat this morning, a Friday, to be at the Haw market here in Chiang Mai, a place where Burmese refugees of various cultures, as well as hill people and Yunnanese, come to sell and buy food. So here, back in Thailand, I had a breakfast that was Burmese, a bowl of mohinga. It varies from place to place, but is most often fine rice noodles (that are known in Thailand as kanom Jiin) with a fish-based broth and then toppings sprinkled over it to add flavour and texture. Here the only choice was a crisp fried cracker as well as coriander leaves, but in Rangoon at the small street stalls there's a wide array of toppings and flavorings ro choose from, including a kind of fried shrimp cracker, and slices of banana flower heart, and, and... The other treat for breakfast at the Haw market is various kinds of khao foon, firm smooth tofu-like squares made of mung beans or chickpeas that have been cooked and pureed and jelled, that are sliced into noodles and then topped with flavourings (shallot oil, lime juice, soy or fish sauce, chile oil, etc). I had some khao foon strips on top of my mohinga today, just for the pleasure of their texture.

The Haw market made me feel welcomed back and also somehow reassured that the cultural and historical cross-connections here in the region are alive and real. And as I try to figure out some of the dishes and techniques I came across in Burma, there should be some help and insights to be found here in Chiang Mai... What a wonderfully lucky thing it is, to be able to be here and trying to learn.

POST SCRIPT ON IMMERSETHROUGH: We have a small group this year for the tour (January 24 to 30, 2010), so we can be portable and flexible. I'm really looking forward to it.

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.