Pub Meal Yangon (by G)

I imagine he's eating something along the lines of Lahpet in Myanmar. Damn him!- Biggs

I didn't mean to eat here. I'd been walking around the baking hot (and sometimes soaking wet) streets of Yangon all day and decided, at about 6 o'clock, that I deserved a beer.

The place I stopped in at was called something like the 'Lions Head'. The place was packed but, undaunted, the waiter guy pulled a chair up to the office desk by the bar (next to the photocopier - just out of shot is a paper guillotine). I got intimidated when he offered me a menu - I felt guilty taking up space just drinking beer so, like a rich western douch-bag, I order two meals.  The one shown below, which came first and I ate all of, is a pork noodle dish. Minced pork with flat rice noodles, onion, garlic, a little ginger, mung beans, egg and some salty sauce. It was not too bad at all.

The other dish (not shown) was a relatively expensive duck curry. Some dried up irregular pieces of duck in a sweet and sour sauce ringed with cucumber slices and crowned with outrageously over cooked prawns in a thick, stodgy batter.  I gagged down as much of the duck as I could and some of the cucumber - as soon as I tried one of the prawns I knew there would be trouble.  About 10 minutes and the rest of my beer later I got the unquestionable signal from my stomach that I was going to be violently ill.  I ordered another beer and asked if they had a bathroom.  There was a queue (of course) which kept getting longer as people pushed in front. The guy in ahead of me said, 'That is the problem with we Myanmar people, we do not understand queuing'.  Eventually it was my turn and I crouched over the squat toilet and hurled my guts up.  Feeling much better I returned to my desk and washed the taste away with beer.

As I said, the minced pork dish was not too bad... for the 15 minutes it was in my stomach.