Our hotels and dining in Burma were very nice, but it was evident that they don’t yet have the infrastructure that most other countries have acquired. Other than in Yangon and Mandalay, I don’t believe that we ate a single meal inside an enclosed building. Most of the time, we ate in the great outdoors but many times, we had a roof over our heads but no walls. I would say that the primary reason was no electricity or a shortage of electricity and hence, no air conditioning. As I’ve said, it was hot and humid, so one might expect a nice restaurant to have air conditioning, but that’s not the case right now in most of Burma.

The food was quite good in Burma. My only complaint was that they served us twice as much food as we needed. I asked our guide and other locals about this and from what they told me, the Burmese serve a lot of food. Of course, it’s mainly an agricultural country, so they have plenty of food. Their food is similar to other southeast Asia countries. The intermixing of cultures with Thailand, China, India and others is very evident in their food.

1. We ate lunch on this day on a bluff overlooking the Irrawaddy River. They said we would have been closer to the river but it was the end of the rainy season, so the dining was set on the high ground. This is not a very good photo, particularly of the river, but you can see that we were out in the open but underneath some trees which provided us some wonderful shade. This meal included spring rolls with sauces, tom yum soup, a peas and carrots dish, stir fried morning glory, and a pineapple pancake for dessert. The next two photos are the other two dishes that we were served at this meal.

2. This was a local fresh fish dish with lemongrass, lime and fresh vegetables and it was excellent. I’m not sure what kind of fish but it tasted great.

3. This is a cashew chicken dish, also really good and really fresh.

4. This dinner might look like we were inside a building but we weren’t. We only had a roof over our heads and it was nighttime. This meal was either tomato or potato soup (our choice), garlic bread, BBQ beef and pork kabobs, French fries, vegetables and fruit.

5. This was breakfast at our hotel in Bagan. Again, we just had a roof over our heads. Pete, by the way, is not on a diet. Pete was the early bird this trip but even if he had finished his breakfast by the time we arrived (as he had on this morning), he still managed to nurse his coffee along until we had finished our breakfast.