Food for the Soul : Burma’s culture, as well as its food, is steeped in spirituality

It had been raining for days, a steady drenching that left the earth soggy and the country’s dirt roads like a wet sponge. Finally, the weather cleared, the roads set and my Burmese friends and I embarked on a trip to the city of Bago, about a two-hour drive to the northeast of this capital city, formerly Rangoon. Our final destination was to be Way Bu Buddhist Monastery, where, knowing my interest in Burmese food, I had been invited for lunch by Nelson Bagalay and his wife, Florence--friends of a Los Angeles friend and benefactors of the monastery. Our lunch was to be held in a small building that they had donated.

What we found there was an intriguing array of dishes set out on a low table. We sat down on woven mats around it.

A dozen women dressed in typical meditation clothing--a brown longyi (sarong), white blouse and brown shawl--clustered nearby, watching my reaction to each bite of the food they had cooked. A little girl fanned me as I ate, and I noticed that she had hair shorter than a boy’s. Florence explained that a respected monk had dreamed that children in this area would die unless their hair was cut off.

Lunch was delicious and quite different from what I have eaten elsewhere in Southeast Asia. A tangy leaf called chin baung made one dish extremely sour, while the sour taste in a vegetable soup came from tamarind. Mango salad was tossed with yellow bean powder, ground peanuts, dried shrimp, onions and chile. We also ate hard-boiled eggs in red curry sauce, pork cooked with eggs, sardine curry and many other dishes, all accompanied by rice.

The table was then carried away and replaced by another--this one laden with sweets, including cooked bananas combined with rice noodles and shredded coconut, candied pineapple, rice cakes and a snack of fermented tea leaves called lapet that is immensely popular with the Burmese people.

The head monk, U Cun Din Nya, joined us. Just back from Bangkok, he treated us to exotic foods he had acquired there, including the candy called Turkish Delight, and a hot, sweet gruel made from packets labeled “Instant Nutritious Cereal,” manufactured in Singapore. Lunch ended when our onlookers adjourned to an adjacent hall for meditation.

Burma is like that, with its culture, as well as its food, steeped in spirituality.

I also found that complex flavors--such as those experienced at this lunch--were the rule, rather than the exception.

And then there was the oil. The lapet glistened with sesame oil. The tomato salad was oily. Curries swam in oil turned red-orange from the seasonings. Oil is expensive in Myanmar, so using it generously shows that you are rich and magnanimous.

For dessert, the Burmese make the same sort of rice flour and coconut milk confections found throughout Southeast Asia, but they are less sweet. A good place to sample them is the big market, Bogyoke Aung San, in downtown Yangon.

With meals, you can order tea, instant coffee, Mandalay beer or soft drinks. My favorite drink was orange Pokka, a juice made with pulp. At Shwe Ba, a leading Yangon restaurant, I sipped Snoopy brand bottled water and listened to Elvis Presley songs playing somewhere in the neighborhood. At another meal I drank a red Bordeaux that I had picked up for a song in a snack shop. And an Englishman living in Yangon told me that he buys premium French champagne regularly for $15 a bottle.

Food is also cheap, unless you go to luxury hotels and fancy restaurants that draw an international crowd. Lunch for three at Shwe Ba, for example, was less than $4, including drinks and dessert.

And I found that good restaurants often appear deceptively humble, even crude. Shwe Ba looks like a big, dark shed, and after dining you rinse off your hands at a water tank in the dusty parking lot. Yet this restaurant is famous for the quality of its food. I ate wonderful chicken and eggplant salads there, and delicious curries of shrimp and fish.

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The Burmese are ardent Buddhists, and I noticed more monks out and about in Yangon than in Thailand, which is also a Buddhist country. During my several visits to the Chanmyay Yeiktha Meditation Center--where people go to live and study meditation--I learned that students from many countries follow an arduous routine, rising in the dark for a long day of group and private work. Peering into a meditation hall, I saw what looked like ghosts--silent forms shrouded in mosquito netting that was suspended from the ceiling. At night, I passed meditators roaming the grounds slowly and silently.

They are restricted, like monks, to two meals a day, but they ate very well, judging by the lunch I attended. My friend, Khin Lei Nwe--a sister of one of my Burmese friends in Los Angeles--had spent three months at the center, shaving her head like a Buddhist nun during this spiritual retreat. She had invited me to accompany her to lunch because she knew I was interested in food, as well as meditation.

That day’s lunch was donated by a Burmese family visiting from Canada and cooked by volunteers. First, meditators and monks ate in silence, concentrating on each motion as a form of meditation while they spooned up the food, chewed and swallowed. When they departed, secular guests assumed their places.

The tables were soon covered with bowls of chicken curry, tiny curried fish, fried bamboo shoots, sour bamboo shoots combined with fish in curry sauce; a light broth containing bean curd, chicken and vegetables; roasted potatoes, boiled beans, fried shrimp paste, chicken innards with cabbage, and sliced fruit, bananas and ice cream. A basin was set beside the table so we could rinse our hands.

But not all Burmese are Buddhists. When Khin and I brought food from a Chinese restaurant back to my hotel, the Moon Light Motel, we avoided anything made with pork to avoid offending the hotel’s Muslim staff. And my friend Florence’s kitchen helper, who served us lunch one day, was a quiet, gentle Christian.

While popular lore suggests that everyone who goes to Myanmar succumbs to travelers’ diarrhea, I was never sick, even though I ate in markets, at teahouses and in village restaurants, and purchased food from itinerant vendors and street stands.

I even ate ice, something tourists are always advised to avoid.

It was when I was descending a long flight of stairs at Shwedagon Pagoda, the magnificent golden edifice that alone is worth a visit to Yangon. The stairs were lined with stalls displaying such intriguing crafts as gilded coconuts and brass incense holders fashioned from bullets.

Tucked into a tiny nook was a woman selling bowls of sweetened coconut milk delicately flavored with durian, a fruit. In the bowl floated red and green squiggles made from mung bean flour, sago pearls (similar to tapioca), slices of bread cut from what must have been the tiniest loaf ever baked--and several ominous lumps of ice. This cool dessert was so tempting that I set aside my fears and scrunched down to eat on a tiny stool balanced on one step. The soup was delightful, and I remained remarkably healthy.

At my Yangon hotel, a five-room establishment that cost $30 a night, I was offered the option of having local food brought in for my breakfast rather than the standard breakfast, offered free with the room, of fruit, eggs and toast. Instead, each morning I enjoyed a potful of sweet, milky tea and a different dish, bought at nearby shops. One day it was mohinga, a soupy combination of fish and rice noodles accompanied by crispy fried tidbits. Another time it was boiled beans and a flat bread similar to Indian naan. Another day I had sweet rice cakes. I experienced an interesting eating experience each day, and the hotel came out ahead financially, despite the extra effort. Eggs, which I would otherwise have eaten, are expensive in Myanmar.

The Burmese are of Tibeto-Burman origin and their food is intensely flavored, although never overwhelmed with hot chiles. Spicing is more subtle than in neighboring India. Gnapi, a pungent paste made with shrimp or fish, appears often as a dip. Sometimes it was too strong for me, but when Khin squeezed in lots of lime juice, it became delicious. Rice is the center of a meal. Noodles are popular too. And the Burmese dote on salads.

One of the best I ate was a tomato salad at Pike Pike, a restaurant in the country near the town of Syriam, east of Yangon. Here, instead of reading a menu, you peer into pots of food lined up outside. The building is open to the highway, so my companions and I were issued a palm fan to ward off flies and, periodically, the waitress would walk over to give us a good blast with her fan. We were also issued checkered cloth napkins that would have looked smart in a California bistro--an unexpected luxury in such a simple place.

Eating Pike Pike’s raw tomato salad was as risky as eating the icy coconut soup, but it, too, was well worth it. Golden brown, deep-fried garlic slices, toasted sesame seeds, chiles, lime juice and dried shrimp gave it exciting flavor.

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Afterward, we drove to the Bagalays’ country house for dessert. There, seated on mats on the veranda, we sampled peanut candy and dried smoked mango purchased from vendors at nearby pagodas. The restaurant had sent along lumps of toddy palm sugar that tasted much like the maple sugar candies that I loved as a child. We also snacked on a container of lapet. “If you eat too much lapet, you won’t be able to sleep,” Khin warned, showing me how to combine the tea leaves with fried garlic, peanuts, sesame seeds, fried beans and dried shrimp. The flavor is salty and nutty, and I understand how it could become addictive. Glasses of tea brewed by the Bagalay’s housekeeper were just right with our repast.

When it was time to leave Myanmar, I jammed my bags with all sorts of mementos: a colorful jute rug; a sandalwood Buddha; a brass Buddha from Shwedagon; a painting by a fine Yangon artist, Min Wae Aung, whom I had met in Los Angeles; a dozen tapes of Burmese music; books on meditation and a booklet of recipes published in the 1930s, when the British were still in power in Burma.

Just one snack made the trip back home. On the way to the airport, the driver with whom I had toured earlier in the week handed me a bag of peanuts from northern Myanmar, where he had just taken his family on holiday. I was touched that he had thought of me. The roasted nuts, tiny compared to ours, were delicious.

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GUIDEBOOK: Myanmar Meals

I traveled on my own in Myanmar because I have friends there, but most people will be more comfortable exploring with a group or a guide, since the tourism infrastructure is in its infancy. Restaurants in this story don’t have addresses, but tour guides and hotel personnel can direct you to them.

Safety: Although there are continuing news stories of tribal rebellions and human rights violations in Myanmar, I saw no evidence of this during my stay in Yangon.

Visas: I got my visa at the Myanmar embassy in Bangkok. It took only 30 minutes. But visas are available through the Embassy of Myanmar in Washington. Allow several weeks for processing.

For more information: Embassy of Myanmar, Information Officer, 2300 S St. NW, Washington DC 20008, (202) 332-9044; fax (202) 332-9046.

--B.H.