One night for dinner in Mandalay, we got to go for a home-hosted meal with a local Mandalay family. It’s an arrangement that our OAT tour company makes for us but we went without our tour guide. The family makes the meal for us and we eat in their home, like part of the family. Their home was, I suppose, a middle class home. The dad is retired from a government tax-assessor position. There were 10 people living in the house plus a dog. The family included three generations.

1. In this photo, we were sitting in the small living room, looking at the dining table. The kitchen was very small. You can see six chairs and there were five of us. The five of us ate with the dad, while the others in the family served and chatted with us. It was a bit uncomfortable for us to not be able to eat with the whole family, but there simply wasn’t enough space.

2. This photo is the living room coffee table and we were having appetizers before dinner: beer, cashews, and spring rolls.

3. This is eight of the ten family members who hosted us for dinner. There is one daughter and one small child not in this photo.

4. Here is our dinner table: egg drop/fish ball soup, butterbeans, fresh vegetables, asparagus and mushrooms, roasted eggplant, shrimp/tomato salsa, a tofu dish, beef jerky with lime, and pork pot roast. I might have forgotten a dish or two.

5. This was dessert: potato pudding, carrot pudding, condiments, dragon fruit and Asian pears plus avocado juice for after dinner.

We were there for two hours and the conversation was great. We covered the whole world of topics.