Living in Yangon
During my internship at Mira Travels, I had the pleasure to live in the city of Yangon for nearly two months. I really enjoyed the city life, strolling around the colonial buildings after work and having great food with my colleagues for lunch or enjoying the traditional sweet Myanmar tea.
Yangon is a very unique city, you can find the combination of the old beautiful colonial buildings next to modern buildings and small traditional local markets right next to each other. So, while you can have any international style food, you can find right a traditional market next door, where you will have to communicate with smiling and pointing at the food you are interested in and will probably always be surprised by the spiciness of everything, as even fruits are served with chilli.
Attractions in Town
Yangon offers a lot of breath-taking sites and insights into authentic local live, when crossing the Yangon River, you can not only enjoy a unique ferry ride, where you can buy everything from snacks to fruits and bird food, and then, just on the other side of the river you will feel like being in a different place. While passing the basic wooden houses and the countryside villages you will be greeted by everyone with a welcoming “Mingalarbar”, the local greeting.
The city itself has a lot to offer too, beautiful temples and Pagodas, especially the Shwedagon Pagoda, for which the city is famous and the Sule Pagoda, which is located in the middle of a roundabout in the centre of the city are very impressive to visit. These pagodas offer a great atmosphere and you can easily spend hours there. Especially at the Shwedagon Pagoda it is a special experience to arrive there in the late afternoon and then enjoy the views during daylight, sunset and the night, in which the Pagoda looks like it is glowing, one of my highlights here.
Circular Train Experience
The circle train is also a good way to discover the city, in 3 hours it drives in a circle line from the city centre area to the country side and will be surprised by what people transport in the train, some move their whole market stall of vegetables from one stop of the train line to another one. You will also find a lot of different sellers, providing you with snacks, fruits, food and tobacco for the train ride while you can lean out of the window and enjoy the fresh breeze.
Foods & Drinks
Another very important point of experiencing a place is, of course, the food. For me, being a vegetarian travelling to different places, I do not take finding good food easily for granted. But in Yangon it was easy to communicate what I eat, and so I had the pleasure of trying all different kinds of traditional food and especially falling for the Tea Leaf salad, which is called laphet here. It is made of fermented tea leaves, which taste slightly bitter and are then mixed with roasted nuts and seeds and some fresh vegetables and tastes absolutely amazing!
You can also find all different kinds of drinks to hydrate you in the heat of Yangon. Starting with the Myanmar tea, a sweet milk tea, which can be enjoyed in the teahouses spread all over the city, to the sugar cane juice that will be made for you freshly on the street or the biggest variety of tasty fruit juices you can imagine.
I really enjoyed living in Yangon and while I will not miss the crazy traffic and beeping vehicles I will definitely have many other things that will be missed!
About the blogger :
Teresa S. is a tourism student at Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University & University of Applied Sciences Salzburg who join for internship at Mira Travels and lends a great hand in setting up of Myanmar Experiences Center.
Check our blog at : https://educationaltravelmyanmar.com/blog/