Today we are going to explore Yangon again before we head off to Bagan.
We have breakfast in a food court, like the ones we have in Malaysia and Singapore. There are stalls serving all sorts of food in the Morning Star Food Centre.
I order curry mee or curry noodles which comes with thicker noodles than what we get at home. It has chicken, fresh onions and limes. It also comes with black pudding (this one is chicken blood) like the Penang curry mee. BTW, I don’t eat black pudding.
My host has noodles, which has fish gravy (some what like Penang assam laksa), and roti pratha with dhal. Sounds familiar? The breakfast is interesting. While the names of the food are the same, it tastes slightly different from the ones back home in Malaysia. Of course, we have the usual drinks like ‘teh O’, ‘kopi’, etc.
By now, I notice that people like to put ‘powder ‘ on their face. It is actually a paste made from a tree. The paste is to make the skin soft and beautiful, or, handsome. Both men and women use it.
After breakfast we head to Chinatown. It is a proper China town as there is a Chinese temple, and a lot of Chinese businesses. We walk around the area and there are different sections where certain types of business congregate. There is the printing and book production area, wholesale area, market area, etc.. We do things that tourists do, take photos.
Then we proceed to the World Peace pagoda, or, Kaba Aye Pagoda Again, there is entrance fee for foreigners. It is a beautiful temple complex. It houses the relics of Lord Buddha’s disciples, Shariputra and Maudglama. It is a very large complex and has many statues of Lord Buddha and his disciples. The Maha Pasana Guha (great cave) was built simultaneously with the Kaba Aye Pagoda and is located in the same complex. The cave is a replica of the Satta Panni cave, located in India, where the first Buddhist Synod was convened. (Source: Wikipedia).
After that, we proceed to the Buddha’s Wisdom Tooth temple or the Great Tooth Relic Pagoda. It houses the wisdom tooth of the Buddha. This temple, to me, looks very modern with a pale colour and gold colour ‘trimming’. It looks very grand and reminds me of a palace. Swe Taw Myat Pagoda, as it is known locally, was constructed to enshrine a sacred Buddha tooth relic, believed to be one of the teeth of the Gautama Buddha who died some 2,500 years ago.
The tooth was brought over from China in 1994 and enshrined in the pagoda for 45 days for Burmese Buddhists to pay homage. Enshrined along with the original relic were two ivory copies, one of which is still enshrined in the Swe Taw Myat today. ( source: Wikipedia).
Construction was funded with donations of Burmese people and Buddhists from all over the world.
We then take a walk in the compound.
We visit another temple and then leave to have Indian food for lunch.
We had a typical Indian meal consisting of rice, curry, dhal, fish, eggs, poppadum and other curries. They do fish stomach or ‘perut ikan’. This is an acquired taste and not easily available My host ordered it.
After lunch, we head home to have a rest to prepare for the evening bus trip to Bagan. However, my host has a bit of issue with the food and has a bit of food poisoning. Much later in the evening, the situation remains the same and she rings the bus company and the tour organiser in Bagan to cancel her trip. So I go to Bagan on my own.
Our plan is to go together to Bagan for 2 days and to Inle Lake area for another 2 days. So my host will catch up with me in the hotel in Inle.
So now I am going to Bagan by myself. I leave Yangon after dinner and look forward to spend a night on the bus.
See you tomorrow!
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Cheers, and I probably will have a bumpy ride!!
Penang Lassie.
