The Myanmar discovery circuit - Day 7 (morning cont.) - On the way to Mount Popa - Palm sugar collecting, peanut pressing process for oil extraction and jaggery delicacy production The 18th of November 2015

 

 

We stopped by the road as we were heading to Mount Popa at approximately 50 kilometres Southeast of Bagan to watch  the process of pressing peanuts to extract oil, as well as the collecting of palm sugar for the manufacture of jaggery.

Jaggery is a concentrated product of date, cane juice and or palm sap which is later mixed with other ingredients, such as  peanuts, condensed milk, coconut and white sugar to produce several locally consumed delicacies.

I love jaggery fabricated delicacies, which I have been fortunate enough to have tried in Cape Verde, once they also use similar peanut pressing and palm sugar collecting processes.

 

 

 

The gentleman who climbed up the palm tree was also into the fabrication of rather intricate bird and decorative hanging objects using palm leaves, which some of us ended up bying. They were particularly beautiful to look at and not at all costly.

 

 

 

We also had the chance of watching the lady of the family in the last  part of the fabrication of coconut jaggery delicacies (which in Cape Verde are known as coconut webs), which most of us bought in small locally wrapped packs, which were available at the small café restaurant the family was running.

We sat at the small café esplanade , which was quite interesting because of its decoration with the stools, chairs, curtains (and even the toilet doors) having been  made of woven patterned straw ...

 

 

By the time we took to the road again we were feeling a lot more relaxed and "happy" (sugar having had a beneficial influence in our mood ...)