Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Prime ingredients for Burmese sweets include grated coconut, coconut milk, rice flour
(from white rice or sticky rice), cooked sticky rice, tapioca and various fruits. Some
Burmese sweets have been influenced by Indian cooking and include more exotic in-
gredients such as semolina and poppy seeds. In general, Burmese sweets are slightly less
syrupy-sweet than those of neighbouring Thailand, and often take a cake-like, seemingly
Western form, such as
bein móun
and
móun pyit thalet,
Burmese-style 'pancakes' served
sweet or savoury.
Pregnant women, stay away from bananas! According to local beliefs, your baby will be
born overweight if you indulge while pregnant.
Drinks
Nonalcoholic Drinks
Black tea, brewed in the Indian style with lots of milk and sugar, is ubiquitous and cheap,
costing K200 per cup at the time of research. Most restaurants and teashops also provide
as much free Chinese tea as you can handle.
The end of Western sanctions means that Pepsi and Coke are now available across the
country; indigenous pop brands include Fantasy, Lemon Sparkling, Max, Star, Fruito and
Crusher. They taste pretty much the same as their Western counterparts.
Real coffee is limited to a handful of modern Western-style cafes in Yangon and other
large cities. As a result, coffee drinkers will find themselves growing disturbingly at-
tached to the 'three-in-one' packets of instant coffee (the 'three' being coffee, creamer
and sugar), which you can have in teahouses for about K250.
The website hsa*ba (
www.hsaba.com
)
, written by cookbook author Tin Cho Chaw, in-
cludes a blog that regularly features Burmese recipes.
Alcoholic Drinks
In the past the people of Myanmar were not big drinkers. This was due to a lack of dis-
posable income, but also to the consumption of alcohol being looked down upon by the
many Burmese Buddhists who interpret the fifth lay precept against intoxication very
strictly. However, with the advent of 'beer stations' - places that serve cheap draught
beer - the number of urban locals who can afford a few glasses of beer after work is on
the rise.
