At some point I will do a whole street food Yangon, or street food Myanmar blog, but for now I will settle for a little gem I found, lime fruit salad in Yangon.
As with most great finds this was indeed accidentally found when we went to visit the main temple, namely the Shwedagon Pagoda. This complex has the beautiful pagoda, which is quite expensive to visit, as well as a plethora of stores selling Buddhist niknaks.
For me personally though I had street food on my mind, or at the very least food of any description.
Street Food Shwedagon Pagoda
At the bottom of the hill that houses the Shwedagon Pagoda there is a lively street that mostly has trinkets for sale, but also one, or two street food joints. We managed to find one where the guy not only spoke English, but was of a rather friendly persuasion.
By the looks of things he mostly had vegetarian spicy noodles, which of course I partake in, as well as tea salad, which I had already tried, but also some huge green fruits.
He said these were lime fruits, but I think something might have been lost in translation. Perhaps these were of the citrus family, but the big shape and the strange coverings led me to think limes they were not. We tried a little, which was tangy, before he offered us “lime fruit salad”, which of course I said yes to.
WTF is Lime Fruit Salad?
Quite simply I do not know, with to being similar in texture to the tea salad I had previously tried. There were bean sprouts, spices and of course hot sauce which I was warned by foreign body could not take, but of course I took quite literally like a champ.
Definitely tangy and definitely good, but Lime Fruit Salad will not go into my street food hall of fame either.
What really made my day here though and what made it different from say Hua Hin in Thailand was the humanity and humility of the guy serving us, who even simply flatly refused a tip at the end.
Myanmar certainly has its troubles, but it is certainly not with its friendly people and yes, it is safe to travel here in 2024.