Burmese Days 21: NaPyar, the Odoriferous Fish Village

While driving from Rangoon eastwards towards the Golden Rock, our driver took us along a short stretch of the Yangon-Mandalay Highway, then turned right on the Maylamyaing Highway (NH8).

Historical note: the Yangon-Mandalay highway was originally surveyed and laid out by an American engineering company, Louis Berger & Associates, in 1961, under the sponsorship of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (Moorhus and Grathwol, 1992). Initially, conditions seemed to be in place for construction bids to be let, but planning and economic assistance for the project ended in 1963, a victim of deteriorating domestic politics in Burma and worsening relations between the United States and Burmese government. The expressway was finally built by the Burmese between 2005 and 2010, with some funds generated by exporting natural gas to Thailand.

At Waw Village, we stopped for a rail crossing. The train trundles along at a leisure pace because of the rough condition of the track bed. We could see the cars swaying back and forth, I suppose likely to generate cases of mal de mer (or mal de chemin de fer?).

A short distance east of Waw, our driver stopped at NaPyar Village. This is low terrain, crisscrossed by canals and rivers. It reminded me of southern Louisiana. On the barge just off the bank, piles of fish were drying in the sun.

The aromatic dry fish are neatly piled on tables at roadside stands. In the photograph above, the leaves are used to wrap betel nut (chewed by ladies and gents alike).

The lady even uses a pole with hook to neatly organize the fish curls on hooks.

I was impressed by the amount of business these stands attracted. Maybe the Vicksburg farmers' market needs a dried fish stand.

This sturdy gent was mashing up fish remnants in a giant pestle. Afterwards, the mush was poured into a clay pot, sealed, and left to ferment for an unknown amount of time. The resulting fish sauce (juice) was sold in gallon-size glass jugs at the roadside stands. Think of this the next time you buy oriental fish sauce at the supermarket.

Photographs taken with a Fuji X-E1 digital camera.

References

Moorhus, D.M. and Grathwol, R.P. 1992. Bricks, Sand, and Marble: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Construction in the Mediterranean and Middle East, 1947-1991. Washington DC: US Government Printing Office, 660 p. (available online, http://www.history.army.mil/html/books/bricks_sand_and_marble/CMH_45-2-1.pdf)

Blogger note:

I am trying to overcome the problem with photographs not uploading into the blog. Based on suggestions from other bloggers around the world, I removed all the EXIF data from the photographs. For now, the photographs are all appearing, but there is still some issue with the Google servers because for five years, all jpeg files uploaded successfully.

Come to the Supermarket (in old Wan Chai)

Dear Readers, as you know, I love smells, sounds, colors, and activity of produce/meat markets. You may recall I wrote about the Asan Chowk in Kathmandu in 2011 and the amazing Thiri Mingler in Rangoon in 2014. The Wan Chai market (Chinese: 灣仔街市) in Wan Chai, Hong Kong Island, is a similar sensory overload. Hong Kong is a much more modern city, so the Wan Chai market is less earthy than the Chowk or the Thiri Mingler, but there is still plenty to see, smell, and sample.

The Wan Chai area is crowded, streets are narrow, and towering apartments and office buildings loom up over the streets. But this is where thousands of families come to shop for groceries. The Wan Chai wet market itself was built in 1937 and was in use for 6 decades. The market has been moved to a new building, while the 1937 building has been converted to a galleria with smart shops.

Wander about through the crowds, and enjoy the views. Find the fish mongers. I can't identify these morsels, but am sure I ate some of them already cooked. From Cole Porter's Aladdin:

They have: sunflow'r cakes, moonbeam cakes,

Gizzard cakes, lizard cakes,

Pickled eels, pickle snakes,

Fit for any king,

You don't want fish or eels? Well, how about a chicken? You can even meet her first, and make friends.

Ah ha, you are a carnivore. Plenty of vendors to supply your needs. I did not see a snake vendor, but I am sure they exist.

A well-lit ground floor area had numerous vegetable and fish vendors.

If you need more protein in your diet, here is a good source.

Dried herbs? Anything you want is available.

Incense is another popular product. People buy incense before they go to temples or cemeteries. The bundles in the lower photograph are used to ask for wealth blessings in temples. The Chinese characters on the packages, 旺財, mean prosperity.

This is a Chinese dried goods store. The bottles mostly contain dried sea food: abalone, scallop, fish stomach (fish maw), sea urchins, shrimp, cuttle fish, conch, kelp, and more. They are all delicious when cooked properly and are good for you (of course). The tan flat objects hanging from the ceilings are fish maw. My Hong Kong friend said the total value of the products in this photograph represents millions of HK$.

Finally, if you overindulged, a dispensary can probably sell you some bicarbonate.

When we were in town in October of 2014, street protests, known as the Umbrella Revolution, were still ongoing. This is in front of the Sogo Department Store on Hennessy Road, Causeway Bay. The bus and tram routes were disrupted for months, and local merchants lost business because their shops were blocked or their customers were frightened. Conditions were pretty calm when we were there, but there was significant violence later in the year.

Hong Kong is fun but maybe a bit overwhelming if you are not used to major urban areas. This was my first visit to HK since 1958 - yes, I'm that old. My friends Irene and Philip were gracious and generous hosts.

Photographs taken with a Fuji X-E1 digital camera or 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.

Something is Fishy at the Athens Central Market

This is the first of a series of articles featuring Greece. The Greeks have occupied their rocky, rugged peninsula for four millennia, and they know a bit about decay and rebirth. Athens is the modern capital, a bustling, frenetic city of over four million. The historic heart of Athens is the Acropolis hill, around which there has been human habitation since the Neolithic period. The commercial center of modern Athens is Omonia square, about a kilometer and a half to the north. Connecting the two is Athinas Street, along which you will find tool and hardware shops, banks, bakeries, coffee stalls, bargain clothing emporiums, and the famous Central Market. If you like visiting markets when you travel, this is a great example. It's in a decent part of town, the butchers and vendors are used to tourists, it's colorful and noisy, and it's not too smelly, even in summer. Thousands of tourists wander through, so although any American will stand out, the locals have seen much odder visitors. The market was built in the 1870s. According to a Smithsonian article, the mayor of Athens, Panagis Kyriakos, initiated the project in 1875. Construction continued for ten years, with the arched glass roof finally being completed in 1886. The roof you see in the photograph above is a new one. The market was renovated, painted, cleaned, and "sanitized" about a decade ago. In my files I have photographs of the older, scruffy-looking market, which I will try to scan. I am sure entry into the EU forced the administrators to make changes to comply with EU sanitary standards. This grand hall reminds me of similar 1800s arcades in other cities. In particular, one in Providence, Rhode Island, is said to be America's first enclosed mall. The overall market is in the shape of a large central rectangle with a "U"-shape area surrounding it. The fish vendors occupy the central rectangle, while the meat vendors occupy what was formerly the streets or alleys surrounding the 1870s market building. The streets have been roofed over, so that you think you are in one complicated enclosed building. You can buy almost any sort of seafood here (well, maybe not puffer fish), but all common Mediterranean species. Cod fish and herring come from the North Atlantic, and even a decade ago, I saw boxes labeled "Product of Iceland". Don't forget to pick up some octopus or a squid or two. For fans of Bizarre Foods, Andrew Zimmern visited the Central Market in 2010. This episode aired on May 10, 2011. There are several modest restaurants in the market. I suggest a light meal of grilled sardines, fried potatoes, horta (greens), and crusty, chewy, delicious bread (likely to be better than almost any bread you find in the USA). Wash it down with a beer or glass of retsina (or two or three glasses). Your fellow diners will be a friendly cast of characters. They will be glad to take your picture or pose. You can read more in the market in the Smithsonian article: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/athens-200801.html