The Wonders of Inle Lake & Golden Rock, Myanmar (Burma)

 Finally, oh dear god finally, we have reached the final overnight train of our 15 week Eurasian sabbatical. And it was a doozy. I guess you can’t peter out with a whimper, you gotta go out with a big bada boom. Not only did we have to share the cabin with a crazy lady, but we also had dirty sheets, smoky air, a customs border stop, AND a bogie change! You know how much I love bogie changes! If you don’t remember, that’s when they replace the wheels to account for changing tracks and it takes forever and the bathrooms are locked during it and it’s so loud so you can’t sleep through it and it’s all just a BIG OLD MESS OF FUN it’s not fun. I was just hoping that our destination, Warsaw, Poland, would be worth it, and by (prince) George it really, truly, incredibly was. But still this journey BAH LEW. Let’s check in with the little baby laptop. 

Dear little baby laptop diary, 

I’m on my last overnight train! At least for this trip! You know we will take them again soon I’m sure but I expect least a few months where I don’t have to ‘sleep’ on dirty sheets with strangers and smoke all around while I have to pee really badly and I am ready for that. This final journey leaves Kyiv/Kiev at 4:41 and arrives in Warsaw at about 8am. Well we aren’t terribly sure what time we arrive at our actual destination because the schedule has no less than SIX (6!!!) ‘Warsaw’ related stops listed! Three of them just say Warsaw but are 10 minutes apart? The others I think are the names of other train stations in Warsaw but ahh. The Warsaw group of stations span from 7:53 am arrival to 8:30 so we hope to find someone who can help ensure we don’t get off in the North Philly part when we want the 30th Street part. The schedule also says that the border crossing stop will only be an hour and fifteen minutes, which is entirely doable for my bladder. Huzzah and hooray! Also we don’t have any stops in Ukraine the entire way from Kyiv to the border, which we should reach about midnight, so that’s a solid 7 hours of relaxation time without worrying about bathrooms closing.

Well, little baby laptop with your balled-up fists pawin’ at the air, I spoke too soon, as I usually do. To start, the cabin does not have the beds on both sides as usual. No, it’s a triple where all the beds are stacked on top of each other so the room is teeeeeny tiny, as you can see above in the very badly lit photo. That tiny corner tabletop sticking out under the side of the window is the other wall, so you can see that there was barely enough room to stand between the edge of the bed flats and the wall let alone feel free to move about the cabin. Normally this would be fine if it were just Z and me in there, but we were sharing with a stranger. And not just any stranger, a Ukrainian who I’m gonna say was named Bianca. She was probably late 30s-40, she was blonde (as our Russian teacher would have snidely called her a ‘blondinchka’), and she talked more than anyone I’ve ever met in my life. Luckily we had the bottom and middle bed flats so we didn’t have to make Bianca’s unenviable climb to the rafters for her bed, but this setup meant that until bedtime, we all had to sit on that one bottom bunk together. And sitting close together means, to Bianca at least, that you have to talk. I didn’t even look at my Kindle for four hours. 

She did not stop talking. I’m not much of a talker myself but this was beyond normal human levels of communication. She was Ukrainian but dating a man in Warsaw and I think the man was English or at least does a lot of business in England. So she was excited to talk to us about London, which she has been to many times. Bianca talked about their relationship, how long they’ve been together and where she hopes it goes even though we are STRANGERS. She said he’s in the restaurant business so they get to eat at all the most famous restaurants in England and Europe and if this were a normal conversation I would have asked if any were the restaurants that we’ve eaten at or heart of but I didn’t have the strength to attempt interrupting her and what’s more I really didn’t care. We learned all about the types of cars she has ridden in and which ones her boyfriend owns or plans to buy. I feel like she is probably having an affair with a married guy? 

It was all so annoying but relatively innocuous at first, but as she got more comfortable/ran out of other words, she spoke about matters that revealed she was a HUGE F-ING RACIST and prejudiced against literally every disadvantaged group. So fun to realize that you are trapped in a box with a bigot for twelve more hours, right??? I just sat there and took notes on what she was saying the entire time so nb that these are all her words. She told us about the president of Belarus and how great he is, because he will fly around his country to see if people are farming (as they are supposed to) and if he sees anyone on a farm who is not working hard, he will throw them in prison and maybe that’s what Ukraine needs to be a stronger richer country! “This is great and smart job!” she told us. Then she told us how she saw a black lady in London who paid black men to have babies with her every year so she could keep collecting benefits and we were DONE with this bullshit by this point so Z explained (he was trying so hard not to scream) how that is one of the most trotted out Tory lies in their attempt shore up support in their (horrid) base for getting rid of social welfare. She didn’t really get the hint that we were Not Interested In Shittalking Minority Groups so she then told us about a group of Jews from Israel that she saw in a Polish airport. These Jews, she told us, had curly hairs (perish the thought!) and costumes (like Slutty Nurse?) and they smelled awful (true) and prayed together (you don’t fucking say) with everyone watching like it was a big to-do and now she doesn’t need to go to the circus because she saw that. So I responded “yeah all religion is super crazy right and every religion’s traditions are like a big show” and made her agree that way which felt like as big a win as I could get under the circumstances since she was clearly an Orthodox Jesus-lover of some sort. Ughhhh.

I would have taken even more bathroom breaks than necessary but it was not exactly comfortable in there. You know how most public restroom stalls are so poorly designed that you have to like squeeze around the toilet in order to open/close the door because people who get hired to do ONE JOB are incompetent? Well here you had to somehow squeeze behind the toilet in order to get inside and close the door. Brushing your teeth was not fun in there. 

We got ready for bed finally, and shooed Bianca up to her loft hoping that it would make her quiet. The sheets are wet and smell like pee so that’s super fun. Gotta go out with a bang on this final overnighter! As much as I would have hated being on the top of the triple decker, and as much as I needed to be on the bottom because of my bathroom use, it was really scary to be down there. There was only about a foot and a half of space between my bed and Z’s – if I bent my knees they’d hit his bunk – and with two whole adult humans above me on those creaking flats that we put into place, I was pretty nervous that everything would come crashing down. 

We slept a little and were woken up when we reached the border. And not that I should be surprised, but the schedule was FULL OF LIES. It wasn’t an hour. Ukrainian exit itself was two hours! We got to that stop at 12:30 am and stayed until 2:30 am because there was a bogie change. Arghhhh. It was incredibly loud and crazy to begin with, but then we heard men outside the cabin unscrewing stuff. We opened the door and saw guards taking the train apart – unscrewing wall panels, ceiling structures, taking the doors off, every single thing as they searched for contraband. I guess smuggling goods is big here as you get into the EU but damn them guards are THOROUGH. They’re literally taking the train apart before even looking at our passports! Screws were falling everywhere, clattering against the floors and walls. And I had to peeeeee. 

Finally they came into our cabin and a mean lady made me take Z’s giant bag out from under my bed and unpack it, like all the way down to the ramen. She paused, deliberating whether the ramen was worth fighting, decided it wasn’t, and then left. It’s all such a ridiculous process. The schedule had said that customs would be finished at 3:10am but we didn’t even get there until 3:15am so I realized I had forgotten about time changes and stuff. Blahhhh what a night. 

BUT WE’RE DONE! We landed, figured out which Warsaw we wanted of the six, and we were back in the EU! Hello! No more overnight trains! At least for the next few months! We felt like home was getting closer and closer, especially when the Warsaw train station greeted us with this: 

We don’t even have Dunkin’ in London and they don’t even sell anything I want but still, home-y. 

Man we were so tired so we tried to get an Uber, but because of how confusingly the streets around the station are laid out, the Uber couldn’t find us! So we had to cancel that and try another one gahhh Uber sucks but it was our only decent option right then. Finally one came and took us to our hostel, Dream Hostel Warsaw, which we had to walk the final bit of the way to get to because of the layout of the streets there. Ack Warsaw what is with your streets? We were so cranky and everything seemed to be going wrong, especially when we were told at the hostel that the room would not be ready for 4-5 hours. I wanted to cry. Traveling for so long is EXHAUSTING. 

Luckily, Warsaw was worth all of this initial b.s. It was one of my favorite destinations, although it might all be due to finding the vegan pierogie place. Stay tuned for the next few posts, which will be objectively happier. Okay maybe not the one where we talk about the history but the food one for sure! 

BYE TRAINS! *Phoebe whisper* forever.

Honestly, if you ask me about Shanghai’s food or what I ate, my very first thought is, “When can I go back?” I didn’t even scratch the surface of what there is on offer for vegans, but what I tried was incredible. 
Oh, and if you came here from the previous post just to find out what toon bags are, that’s at the last section, but why would you want to skip all this food before that? Do you SEE how delicious it is? I mean you can’t see deliciousness but just look how good. Dammit I love Shanghai’s food! 

 Shanghai is famous for a few specific dishes, like xiaolongbao, the famous soupy dumplings (apparently, not to be confused with ‘soup dumplings’ which are a different kind of dumpling filled with soup? It’s all very specific but hey, they are still soup dumplings to me).  Unfortunately, I have not been able to find vegan version of soup dumplings (hit me up if you know where to go!) anywhere in the world, and I didn’t find them in Shanghai, but I did find a lotttt of other buns and dumplings so I was happy. As you know from my Beijing food post, I really like dumplings. And I shared my first meal in Shanghai in the first Shanghai post, because it was a food court salad (RG though!) at the Shanghai Tower. Today we are going to talk about the other three meals I had in Shanghai, at amazing vegetarian restaurants that I want to go to again and again and try everything at because they were phenomenal. I’m kind of surprised that I don’t have more food to share but it was super hot and I think I just ate a lot of fruit while there. China has incredible fruit! Also, a lot of bubble tea.

Speaking of, before we get to the food: 

Guys, I mean, I’ve had bubble tea before, many times. I’ve always thought it was kind of whatever, sweetened tea which I don’t like with weird tapioca balls at the bottom that are just super weird. But apparently, bubble tea in China has done what olives did in Portugal – completely changed my view on them and tastebuds and just did a complete brain reversal because now I love both. In Portugal, I grew to love olives because a lot of the time they were literally the only food (and bread) that a town had for me! But here, I’m just like, immediately obsessed with bubble tea. I crave those little bubbles SO hard. 

After the acrobatics show we saw in our favorite place in Shanghai, Expat Centre (not its real name), we found this cafe called Pure & Whole, a small chain in Shanghai of ‘clean’ healthy food with vegan options clearly marked. Now normally I would wholeheartedly boycott any place or any person describing food and not underwear as ‘clean’, but I can’t afford to have all the morals when traveling. Also I can chalk it up to a langauge barrier? Or just the message about that kind of judgmental bullshit hasn’t reached China yet. But I admit I had to get food here, because they had big salads, great looking salads the likes of which I hadn’t seen since Moscow. So, considering we had already eaten dinner but the following day was a travel day, I got an amazing salad and an order of quinoa balls to go. Hehe balls. The quinoa patties were mixed with onion, kale, garlic, mung bean, whole grain breadcrumbs, and spices. Haha I copied that from the menu. The salad, hoo boy it was WONDERFUL sounding. I got the Popeye, which was spinach, mung beans, lentils, cooked spinach, edamame, hen of the woods mushrooms, broccoli, coconut bacon, scallions, wakame, avocado, and miso dressing. I MEAN. Could you BE any more perfect for me? It had lentils! Avocado! Want to hear it become even more perfect? They said they had run out of spinach, and I said “is there another green to substitute?” They said they had kale. I think they were concerned at how happy that made me.

Because they were takeout containered, the pictures are even less appetizing than my usual ones, and I cannot in good faith share what they looked like outside the restaurant’s preferred plating ideals. You don’t want to see what the beige quinoa fritters looked like in their beige container in the beige-ifying light of our hotel room the next day. Nor do you want to see the salad stuffed into a container that was just too small for its grand size. Both were very good though, and I would love to eat at P&W and try other things. They had a great sounding menu, and I really enjoyed the things I got. They also sent a packet of pita bread in my to-go bag! I guess it came with the patties or the salad, which is awesome. Yippee for bread (so rare in China! I haven’t had bread in so long because most of the bread here is eggy or milky)! 

Okay, onto the more important stuff, our two spectacular dinners. First, we went to a fancy (we didn’t know it would be fancy!) vegetarian restaurant with wonderful reviews called Vegetarian Life Style. I like that the front says life style as two different words because I like to think they mean vegetarian life AND vegetarian style, because we are so stylish. I mean just check out the style section of this blog which I literally have not updated in four years lolol. Maybe I will do that soon and write about my extraordinarily unfashionable travel clothes. ANYWAY, the restaurant. It was PACKED and in a very swanky neighborhood, JiangNing, so that was great to see. We weren’t as hungry as we usually are so we didn’t order as much as we usually do, which is a DAMN DIRTY SHAME. 

Why such a shame? Because the food may have been the best actual quality we had so far in China. Every dish was superb. I’ve loved most of the vegan food we’ve found so far even if it wasn’t exactly exceptional but these dishes really were. As always, we first needed a green vegetable, and I got this broccoli stem looking jawn that wasn’t broccoli but some kind of chinese cabbage I don’t know it was so well done and came with an incredible mushroom mix with more green stems. I love green stems almost as much as green leaves, and they are better than leaves when cooked!  

Then we got this super spicy tofu dish that was mixed with lots and lots of chilis, celery, mung beans, bean sprouts, and cauliflower, and it came in an ON-FIRE cauldron. Seriously, the dish came over a gas burner, aflame, that did NOT go out ever! When we finished eating it was still going and was starting to be scary so a guy came over and extinguished it when we asked. But because of that eternal flame, the dish stayed PIPING hot, which was really funny but like, I needed it to cool off! Luckily it was, like I said, delicious. 

Lastly, we got probably my favorite noodle dish so far in China, a spinach noodle bowl topped with bok choy and a spicy chopped tofu mixture. It was so flipping great. I would like to have this now please. 

If/when I go back to Shanghai, Vegetarian Life & Style Magazine may very well be my first stop. 

Well, maybe my second stop. 
​

The Jen Dow vegetarian buffet is without a doubt my favorite buffet in the world. Inside the Jing’ian Temple complex not too far from Expat Centre, Jen Dow is this big building above filled with vegetarian dining. The first floor is a casual cafeteria full of locals, plus a vegetarian bakery (I doubt anything is vegan). The second floor is a restaurant with Chinese and Western menus. The fourth floor is a more expensive version of the second floor, with Chinese and Western menus PLUS VIP rooms, whatever that means. But the third floor, guys. The third floor is WHERE IT’S AT. That’s the vegetarian buffet, an all-you-can-eat extravaganza that we read in advance was quite expensive for China (about $35 USD, which is our most expensive meal yet), but that the food was really good. We figured it’s worth a try, and even if it’s so expensive at least you can eat all you can! 

I was not prepared for how beautiful everything about this place was. It was so fancy (we were, again, not dressed appropriately for our tastes but a) no one cared and b) we don’t have nice clothes on us). And the buffet went on FOR MILES. I have never seen such an enormous, gorgeous buffet. Everything was clearly marked with what had egg and what had milk (most of the desserts, which I expected, but not much of the actual food!). I have never eaten so much in my life but still wanted more. Everything was at least good, most things were great, and some was spectacular. Because it’s a ginormous buffet with literally 540030 different dishes, I have no idea what I ate and what’s in these pictures I’m about to send your way, but know that it was wonderful and I can’t wait to go back. 

​I know you’re like JESUS did you just share every picture you took? Hell I didn’t even share all my pictures of the DISPLAY. It kept going. An hour in I asked Z what he was eating because I hadn’t seen it and we realized that I had missed the lineup along one ENTIRE WALL. And guess what was over on that wall, guys? THE TOON BAGS! Teased in the previous post. 

​They were really fun and yummy! Everything was. I had soo much mock meat, all of it epic. So many great vegetable dishes. I tried stinky tofu for the first time – it is stinky! Why do people eat it! I had so many dumplings and steamed fluffy buns and amazing noodle dishes. There were endless arrays of juices and ‘enzyme’ shots which were like vinegary juices (like shrubs!). All of it was incredible. 

I really need to return here. FFS, there were entire SECTIONS I didn’t even enter! This hot area had a make your own noodle bar (I KNOW) and a make your own hotpot bar (I KNOW!) but there was just too much food and we couldn’t try everything, no matter how hard we tried. It was epic. I highly recommend the Jen Dow buffet if you are in Shanghai. And please take me with you. 

So, after our China journey began with amazing food in Beijing, we continued to be impressed and blown away in Shanghai. After we left these big cities, the quality would decrease as is expected, but we are still eating pretty darn well. Stay tuned!