One of the best places to visit in Asia is Yangon, Myanmar’s largest city. Nature lovers will appreciate the city’s stunning lakes, shady parks and verdant tropical trees. These are the reasons why it is dubbed ‘The Garden City of the East’.
1. Walk Around Yangon (on Foot)
In a city like Yangon, you just never know what you’re going to find, see, or experience when you’re randomly walking around.
Businesses of every kind, busy street food stalls, relaxing tea stalls, markets occupying the sides of sidewalks and streets filled with a colorful bounty of produce, temples of a diversity of religions… and that’s just the beginning of what you’ll see.
- Walking in Yangon is a way of exploring
Exploring Yangon on foot, gives you the opportunity to stop and watch something interesting, or to notice the details of what’s happening here and there. Downtown Yangon is such a busy place, and though it may look a bit disorganized, somehow the city functions and flows.
Make sure you are careful crossing the main roads, pedestrians by all means don’t have the right of way, so just be careful, but other than that, just starting walking around the streets of downtown and you’ll see life unfolding in front of you.
2. Eat Myanmar Food and Drink Tea
Myanmar is slotted between India, China, and Thailand, and the flavors of their cuisine have been influenced by this spectrum of regional diversity.
Walking down the street in downtown Yangon, you literally can’t go more than a few steps without arriving at the next street food stall. There are interesting things to eat being whipped up at nearly every corner.
- Street food and Barbecues in Yangon
One of the most popular dishes in Myanmar cuisine, available nearly everywhere you go, is a dish called mohinga. It’s a bowl of rice noodles submerged in a fish based soup broth that tastes like a mild curry, full of flavorful ingredients and spices.
Another Myanmar food you can’t miss when you’re in Yangon is laphet thoke, or pickled tea leaf salad. It’s a common dish that you’ll find at restaurants and at side of the street tea stalls.
Tea plays a major part in the social culture of Myanmar, and basically every sidewalk throughout Yangon is occupied, at some point throughout the day, by a tea stall.
All you have to do is find an empty plastic stool, order a snack that’s available, and tea, which is Chinese style tea, is served complimentary. Drinking tea on the side of the road, sitting on a micro stool, is one of the great joys of visiting Yangon.
3. Window shopping in local fresh markets
One of the interesting things about this market in Yangon is that, despite the busyness of the market and vendors selling in the middle of the road, small delivery vehicles will still pass through.
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