Strolling the Streets

Pedicab bells chime throughout the small alleys where most Yangon residents live. There’s not enough room for four-wheeled traffic, so these three-wheel “sidecars” (aka bicycle taxis) provide the transportation for anyone with heavy packages or worn-out legs. The riders swerve but don’t stop. You have to keep your ears open to avoid being run over.

Usually a few sidecars look for passengers at the street market. They wait next to the spot on the corner where all the vendors agree to pile up their fruit peelings and crumpled packaging throughout the day. You pass dozens of such spots in the evenings. By morning they’ve all disappeared.

Minstrel salespeople also pack the lanes, shouting or singing to advertise their wares. The law prevents electric amplification of sales pitches. Slowly you become able to match what’s on offer to individual sounds: the cry of the recycling man, the gong that goes with the pickled plum cart, and the tune of the lady who carries something long and fried in a ceramic bowl atop her head.

Customers call down to the street from an upper floor window or balcony when they want the attention of one of these vendors. The transaction then happens via a long cord with a clip attached to the bottom end. Why climb the stairs? These personal ropes can hoist nearly anything— breakfast, a newspaper, payment for last month’s electricity, younameit. Some buildings have half a dozen such “mailboxes” hanging out front, the longest stretching 6 or 7 stories high.

Myanmar’s not a convenience store country. If you want a snack, you have to buy your apples from a street market and slice them yourself. In spots where Thailand would likely have a mini-mart, here you’re more likely to find a temple. Sometimes the neighborhood holy place is just an altar or a tree whose trunk has been painted gold. Shrines are everywhere, outnumbered lately only by shops selling mobile phones or perhaps by corner newsstands.

Carrying around store-bought food, with its bright packaging, makes you feel a little self-conscious. Most people put home-made lunches of rice and chilies in a steel tiffin. Men carry these tiffins by the handle. Women seem to prefer placing them in a pastel plastic tote basket, a second handbag. It’s part of a uniform look that’s unlike what women wear in other lands.

You feel scruffy by comparison. They’re just about always dressed up. At bottom is their traditional skirt, which they combine fearlessly with countless top types, sometimes contradictory, often flattering, always appropriate. You suspect that they discuss new color combinations and designs during long evenings at home or at the beauty “saloon” (who’s to say that the American spelling of “salon” is the right one?). It doesn’t matter how they come up with so many ways to be attractive. As long as they keep doing it, strolling the streets will remain a pleasure.