Burmese Days 11: Bo Kyoke Road Sidewalk Markets

Dear Readers, in the previous post, I visited Scott's Market in downtown Rangoon. That seemed mostly oriented to the tourist trade and to arts and textiles. But tiny street markets are where many Burmese buy their supplies, vegetables, and foods. Across Bo Kyoke Road from Scott's market, the entire sidewalk for several blocks is one continuous mass of vendors, crowds, vegetables, food stands, and chickens.

This is one of the family photographs from the same area in 1957 (Anscochrome taken with a Leica IIIC camera). During my recent rip, a couple of people who saw a print said this might have been at a cinema that was formerly on that road.

Today, the scene is more crowded and food vendors have taken over. The huge citrus fruit in the second photograph are pomelo (Citrus grand is), which I found to be a lot of work to peel.

You can find almost any kind of green vegetable or grass you could imagine. I wonder how the vendors rent space for their chunk of sidewalk? 

Want a snack? These fried guys are full of protein and are a Burmese delicacy.

Burmese are very literate, and we saw a good number of book-sellers with stands jammed full of books and pamphlets.  

This is 27th street, lined with vendors. It is cheerful on a sunny day, sweltering in summer, and a mess in the rain.

Want fast food? Well, here it is locally-sourced and prepared.

A few blocks further east near the Sule Pagoda, the shops are more industrial with tools, locks, plumbing, and metal-works. The way industries cluster reminds me of the flea market in downtown Athens or Kathmandu.

In the next article, we will go to a giant wholesale market near the Yangon River.

Photographs taken with a Panasonic G3 with Olympus 9-18mm lens, Fuji X-E1, and a Nexus 4 phone.

The Rialto Market, Venice, Italy

Long-term readers know I like public markets, and the Rialto Market in Venice, Italy, is a a good one. The market has been here for hundreds of years and is still active, but has lost most of the Medieval earthy character that must have assailed a visitor's nose during its pre-20th century history.

Map drawn with ESRI® ArcMap™ 10.0 software using the ESRI topographic basemap layer

The Rialto Market is easy to reach.  If you are staying in a hotel in the San Marco district, walk across the Rialto Bridge (Italian: Ponte di Rialto), which spans the Grand Canal.

The Rialto Bridge is a popular tourist site with a fantastic view of the activity below.  The present bridge, replacing an older wood span, is a single span built of stone.  It was designed by Antonio da Ponte and completed in 1591.  It is an unusual design with rows of shops under the portico.  The shops sell expensive tourist souvenirs.

You can also take a water taxi, depending on where your are staying, but most people walk. Even Ernest Hemingway described this walk in his 1950 novel, Across the River and into the Trees,

"Then you could climb the bridge and cross it and go down into the market. He liked the market best. It was the part of any town he always went to first." 

Excellent advice for the modern tourist.  A market tells you a lot about the people of a town and their habits.

Proceed a few blocks northwest and you reach Campo de la Pescaria, the market district.  On my recent trip, some drizzle was falling and the market was a bit subdued.  You can follow the National Geographic walking tour if you want a route map.

But the awnings were down and the merchants were selling vegetables and all forms of seafood.  I did not see the snail lady.  Time to scan some old negatives from previous visits. As Hemingway wrote,

"He loved the market. A great part of it was close-packed and crowded into several side streets, and it was so concentrated that it was difficult not to jostle people, unintentionally, and each time you stopped to look, to buy, or to admire, you formed an îlot de resistance against the flow of the morning attack of the purchasers."

There were plenty of marine organic materials whose origins I could not guess, but have no doubt that Venetian chefs can make them utterly delicious.  The swordfish steak would be fine, too. Back to Hemingway:

     "He took a short cut, and was at the fish-market.
     In the market, spread on the slippery stone floor, or in their baskets, or their rope-handled boxes, were the heavy, gray-green lobsters with their magenta overtones that presaged their death in boiling water. They have all been captured by treachery, the Colonel thought, and their claws are pegged.
     There were the small soles, and there were a few alba-core and bonito. These last, the Colonel thought, looked like boat-tailed bullets, dignified in death, and with the huge eye of the pelagic fish. 

     They were not made to be caught except for their voraciousness. The poor sole exists, in shallow water, to feed man. But these other roving bullets, in their great bands, live in blue water and travel through all oceans and all seas.
     A nickel for your thoughts now, he thought. Let’s see what else they have.
     There were many eels, alive and no longer confident in their eeldom. There were fine prawns that could make a scampi brochetto spitted and broiled on a rapier-like instrument that could be used as a Brooklyn icepick. There were medium sized shrimp, gray and opalescent, awaiting their turn, too, for the boiling water and their immortality, to have their shucked carcasses float out easily on an ebb tide on the Grand Canal.

     The speedy shrimp, the Colonel thought, with tentacles longer than the mustaches of that old Japanese admiral, comes here now to die for our benefit. Oh Christian shrimp, he thought, master of retreat, and with your wonderful intelligence service in those two light whips, why did they not teach you about nets and that lights are dangerous?"

The ancient streets and alleys in the Rialto District are interesting architecturally.  There are plenty of arches, tunnels, and narrow lanes.  It is less crowded than the more popular San Marco district.

Finally, here is the result of all this fantastic produce and meat.  Venice's restaurants are a bit expensive, but no more so than ones in Manhattan or Los Angeles, and a glass of house wine is only a Euro or two. I could live in Italy.....

For readers interested in other markets, please see the posts on:
1.  Egyptian Market, Istanbul
2.  Reading Terminal, Philadelphia
3.  Central Market, Athens
4.  Farmers' Market in rural Greece
5.  Asan Chowk market, Kathmandu

Across the River and into the Trees is an odd novel.  It is about a crusty old U.S. Army officer in love with a young Venetian Contessa.  As summarized in Wikipedia, "Tennessee Williams, in The New York Times, wrote: "I could not go to Venice, now, without hearing the haunted cadences of Hemingway's new novel. It is the saddest novel in the world about the saddest city, and when I say I think it is the best and most honest work that Hemingway has done, you may think me crazy. It will probably be a popular book. The critics may treat it pretty roughly. But its hauntingly tired cadences are the direct speech of a man's heart who is speaking that directly for the first time, and that makes it, for me, the finest thing Hemingway has done.""  I do not agree - it is somewhat slow going, but do read it before your next trip for the flavor of post-war Venice.

Photographs taken with a Nexus 4 phone (sorry, no real camera this trip), with adjustments in ACDSee Pro software.

Great Eating at Reading Terminal Market, Philadelphia

When you visit Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the Reading Terminal Market should be on your obligatory visit list. You can find almost anything to eat there! The Market occupies the ground floor and basement levels of the Reading Railroad's former train shed and terminal, which was built up above the street level. The railroad part of the terminal was abandoned for many years, but the city revived the amazing shed and converted it into a convention center in the 1990s. Nice work!, especially in light of how many similar engineering monuments were destroyed in other cities in the mid-late 20th century during greedy and misguided disasters of urban renewal.  One infamous example: New York's Pennsylvania Station was demolished to build the cheesy Madison Square Garden.

According to an interesting article in Wikipedia, the Market was one of the first in the USA to include a state-of-the-art refrigerated storage area in the basement. The refrigeration system used brine water and ammonia operated by specially designed pumps, compressors, and other equipment.


This is the convention center and example of the amazing steel truss system that holds up the roof. Thirteen tracks once occupied this area, which now has a marble floor.

From the street level, the market dies not look like much, but the inside contains the emporium of gastronomic excellence and calorific excess. Readers of this blog know I love farmer's markets in all their varieties (Athens, Kathmandu).





The tradition of the farmers' market lives on! Peppers, cherries, corn - whatever you need. (The colors are a bit off because I did not have time to adjust a custom white balance.)

If you want some fish or meat, you can select as much as you want.


This is a cheese-lovers emporium.

Coffee-flavored soda?


Sandwich spreads of mysterious ingredients or buffalo eggs? Come and get them.

I prefer the olive oil varieties.

These are the bee wax products.

Finally, everyone's favorite: the chocolates.




Really, most people come here to eat and socialize and achieve calorie input.

Finally, at night, the crowds are gone and the market cleans up.

Photographs: 2008: Fuji F31fd digital camera. 2012: Panasonic G1 digital camera with color adjustments made in Silkypix Developer Studio 3.0 SE.