A Wonderful Taste of Burma

Tuesday, April 26th, 2011

I do not often recommend products, but this range of Burmese products from Chinthe in London should not be missed.

My Mother was born and brought up in Rangoon (now Yangon) in Burma in the nineteen twenties. Descended from good Irish stock, her life was very different from the classic, often distorted view of the British in India that is portrayed on TV and film. Her father was a local garage owner and mechanic (and sometime inventor) who walked out of Burma when the Japanese invaded and my mother’s upbringing was neither isolated nor exclusive. She shared her schooling with Burmese, Indians, Japanese, Chinese, Europeans, Australians, Siamese (this was before Thailand) and others and she enjoyed the markets and people of Rangoon and the Hills in the north, all of which left their mark indelibly imprinted upon her heart. She has written a book about it all – one day I may find a publisher who is willing to print this precious moment of life in the far east from someone who has no fame outside of her family. (It seems that publishers are only interested if you are famous in this celebrity lead world.) (more…)