This is a travel-food vlog transcript of Nate and Kara Buchanan exploring Yangon, Myanmar’s street food in the evening. They discover a lively park-based street-food area, sample several local dishes (samosa salad — a samosa-and-broth dish, various fried snacks including fried banana and bitter leaves, a crepe-like snack, and Shan/’Shaw’ noodles), react to flavors, note very low prices, and preview an upcoming Irrawaddy river cruise. The tone is informal, curious, and enthusiastic.
Chapters
Sam.
Today is day two in Myanmar. We had huge plans for getting out and exploring exploring the city of Yangon today because today is our only full day in the city. However, it is 5:30, so I don't.
Want to say too much right now, but let's just say something came up this morning and we had to stay at our hotel with the Internet to do some emailing and some phone calls.
If you can't tell from her smirk, it's really exciting news. We just can't share it with you yet.
Yeah, we're just gonna. We'll share everything later. But right now we're going out in Yangon.
We could not leave Yangon without trying some of their street food. We hear that Chinatown has the best variety of street food in the city. And there's one dish that we're especially excited to try and we're going to find that now.
We just stumbled upon the most beautiful park area. There's fountains and we are surrounded by beautiful huge buildings. Like I feel like we were just transported to the middle of Europe. Except for the huge Buddhist temple right here. But it feels so good. Sun is setting. Everybody's out just hanging out. I'm loving this city.
Except for that guy that just ran into me for no reason. Totally just walked in.
That was definitely on purpose.
Now we are resuming our search for trip.
I think we found it. It was literally right outside of the park. It just sounds very lively.
Doesn't that look like it?
One of these two of these two, two, two.
This is what we came for.
We found exactly what we were looking for as soon as we walked in. We haven't been here more than two minutes. It's called samosa salad, which is funny cuz it's actually soup. But we walked by and saw these bowls of chopped up veggie samosas with tomatoes. And after you order, she adds some more vegetables. Potato. And then she pours smoking hot broth on top. I think there's some cumin on top with some sugar. Smells so good. Not wait to try this.
That is really yummy. It's such a unique dish. The broth doesn't have a ton of flavor though. It's like a really subtle like maybe a lentil broth. I think that's why she put all the toppings on it. Maybe I should stir it up and get it. All right.
There we go. That was a much better bite. This is delicious. I love soups like this that have so many ingredients you don't even know you're tasting this is a great start to our street food tour. However, we haven't done a ton of research yet. Plus, we don't have any service outside of our hotel room. So we're going to be doing a lot of guessing tonight, which is fun.
Can I get one?
How's everything?
700 in total? Yeah.
Okay. Thank you so much for your help.
Smells spicy.
I'm really excited about this one. So again, we're just totally making this food tour up as we go because we've done pretty much no research. We just passed this stand. It was serving all of this delicious looking fried stuff. So we just ordered one of everything. There was an extremely nice lady who kind of like helped me with the ordering process. So I only know what two of these are. I know that this is a giant fried banana. This, she told me, was bitter leaves. This is what originally caught our eye. It was just this green stuff frying in this huge pan of grease. I think I'm gonna try this first and then wash it down with the banana because I'm pretty sure fried banana is gonna to be good.
I really can't taste the green at all. She told me it was bitter and it was very healthy for you. And if this is healthy for you, I would eat it all day. It's just like a huge fall increase. I'm going to say though, I'm going to save a few.
Thank you.
I'm not going to dip the banana in the sauce. I don't feel like a fried banana goes in the spicy sauce. It looks like a donut. Like a donut banana.
This is my second banana that I've had since we've been here. The first one wasn't fried, but I've learned that the bananas taste like more savory here. Less sweet like the ones I'm used to getting. So this is a very interesting combination.
I can just feel the oil coating my lips on. Now he gets to try the rest of the bag. Just a little bit.
I see chickpeas, chickpea, and these noodles.
So we just walked by this guy. We honestly, it's like a crepe with like just a bunch of inside of it. We gave up on like trying to translate what it was, but it looks delicious.
It kind of looks like a dosa.
Thank you very much.
It kind of looks like an Indian dosa. It was 200, which is like less than 20 cents. This was a fantastic decision. It's so hot right now, I can't even think about trying it. But look how greasy it is. It's just coating the paper bag in grease. I'm sure it's going to be delicious. Also, while we're waiting on it to cool. We were originally planning on going to Chinatown for street food. And then we wandered up to this park, wandered right outside the park, and we've been stuck here eating ever since. So maybe we'll make it to Chinatown, maybe we won't. Upon further inspection, I think the things that I originally thought were noodles inside of this are actually bean sprouts. Maybe there's some chopped up carrots and some chickpeas. And then he just put like some spices and stuff on top of that.
The outside is nice and crispy. You have the crunchy vegetables on the inside of it. It honestly reminds me a lot of a spring roll. Like, that's kind of like the consistency and the taste that it has. Really good.
You can't beat that for 20 cents.
This is so yummy.
Just to give you a little perspective, every chair here has a person in it. And last night we walked back for about an hour and couldn't find anything to eat, especially not street food. And it's because they were all here eating at the street food park. It's crazy. I'm also getting really full. I'm not sure how much more I'm gonna be able to eat.
Thank you. I love it here. The people are so nice and helpful. When we're cluelessly walking around, people just come help us and tell us what things are. Just so nice. Just ordered something that we heard we should try. It's called ch noodle, but we still don't know what it is.
Love these mini tables, chairs.
Getting some help.
I was obviously struggling.
Thank you so much.
I love the people in Myanmar. I was struggling to stir up my noodles and she came over and just did it for me. Okay, so these are Shaw noodles. From what I saw, she put a bunch of sauce in the bottom of the bowl, Then she added a bunch of freshly cooked noodles. And then she put some green on top with some peanuts and some spicy chicken soup.
Thank you.
Chicken soup? Yeah. Great. How much did we pay for this? It was less than a dollar for this massive bowl.
Wow.
That is delicious. So first thing with flavor.
I have no idea what this. I've never tasted anything like it. It is a similar consistency to like a tamarind sauce. Like, it's really thick, kind of sweet. Then it's got all those spices on top. So I don't know. I'm fooled. I'm not good at this. If we don't do our research before.
That's all I got. It's yummy.
You heard it first here, folks. It's yummy.
It is. Gosh, I really can't think of anything to compare it to.
See my nose sweating right now? Those noodles are so spicy. And we just had just a little bit of spice.
A little.
Yes.
I cannot imagine how hot they would have been if we just would have let her put the whole spoonful in there. We're going to keep tonight's food tour short and sweet because we have a very early. Not very early, early for us, an earlier than usual morning tomorrow that we have to get prepared for. And I cannot be more excited because tomorrow we are starting our river cruise up the Irrawaddy. So before we left the travel, I thought that, like, after we've been to all these places, the world would start to feel like a much smaller place, but it's been exactly the opposite. The more we travel, the more places we learn about, the more things we add to our bucket list. Like things that we didn't even know exactly existed before we started traveling. So if anything, like, our world has expanded since we started traveling, and what we're doing tomorrow is a great example of that.
So I have a lawnmower back there. Two years ago, I didn't even know there was a river in Myanmar called the Irrawaddy. And about a year ago, taking a river cruise up the river got added to my bucket list. And I'm just so excited for tomorrow.
Wow. Okay. The sauce is super spicy, but so good. Like, kind of like a. A hot sweet and sour sauce, but not very sweet or sour.
