Here's some traditional Burmese hospitality in operation. Whenever I visit another person's house for a meal, I am greeted with a spectacular array of food, the likes of which we can see above. Here we see the staple - the rice up at the top - and many other 'curries' ('curry' here doesn't just mean the curry folks from the UK would normally think of, it's anything that goes with the rice). Here, going clockwise around the cutlery holder from the top left (below the rice), we have: yellow bean soup (yum, but a little bland), fried egg and onion (yum yum yum, except if its been fried in a pan which had dried fish in it), a plate, non-descript green vegetables (quite stringy but healthy, and they taste like spinich so I think there's a lot of iron in them), the Paste (stay well away - incredibly strong and hot - but do try at least once for the experience, you might just like it!), beef curry (not often available as the meat is exceptionally expensive for people here, and the quality varies). Start off with the rice, add curries 'as you like' - there are no quarms about mixing all food - fish, meat, fruit etc. The orange flannel on the left is usually consumed after the meal. Delicious.

Most food follows this kind of formula. At the school the kids usually have rice, yellow bean soup and fish paste. I usually get rice, yellow bean soup and maybe a fried egg. But around the camp I've experienced a few other delights:

This is a mash of yellow beans, which tastes not quite like mashed potato (because of the salt) but is hot and wholesome. Here it's being unexpectedly and kindly delivered mid-day by Zaw Myo who was working on the store down below the classroom. Sometimes I have just two square meals a day, other times (often weekends), folks amazingly bring me food from around the section.

Here our model scraggily but proudly shows off his green beans in oil (either that or he hasn't noticed the bowl stuck to his chin). They're a cross between runner beans and broad beans, and again feel very wholesome and healthy (when inserted into one's sleeping bag late at night). The oil is a general staple of most food here - apart from the eggs and rare bit of meat, it's the only source of fat in the diet, so is applied liberally to many a curry.

Here's the device that saves everyone from all manner of nasty diseases, and that malaria thing too: a Burmese/Thai/south-east Asian oven, lit with sticks and things poking into the whole you can see. The resulting water is poured into buckets and drank as is (hot, luke warm or cold) or with chinese tea leaves (hot). The ponchant for hot drinks in the hot is slightly unfamiliar for me. On another note, it tends to be the girls who boil the water for everyone in the morning. hmmm. (and no I don't know why there's some massive grey border around this photo, I promise I have tried to get rid of it.)

Not actually in the camp, but in Mae Sot. Here the mysterious hand from above is bringing the morning coffee hot and sweet to the breakfast table, freshly purchased from a local street vendor. Let's hope, viewers, that this particular hand from above isn't the vendor's, snapped from its owner's body by a mysterious gaseous fixative coating the plastic bags.

In the foreground - sticky rice in a fried parcel sprinkled with freshly grated coconut. In the background (and get this) - eggybread! This delight was served up for me at the new Section 13 tea shop, where I was taken by a good teacher friend after he had pocketed his monthly salary.

This is a rare sight in the camp - a lot of fruit. There is an explosion of oranges around Thailand (what western folks might describe as satsumas, clementines, tangerines etc), but inside such delights aren't on display much. This is a special delivery for the boarding students - something which is gratefully received but which disappears fast.

This interesting (and strangely delicious) creation at first had me thinking in a worried 'oh my god it's tripe with sugar on top' direction. But alas (and to be honest as happens usually) my fears were alayed and it turned out to be a good old traditional Burmese cake (pronounced 'bay mowt' with a quiet 't') - though it is a tad creepy/tripe-esque in the texture department.
"Hello, is that the texture department...?"

Here our model and his spoon shows us eggybread again, this time just to highlight the Burmese love of sugar. It is thrown into coffee, has to be dredged out of tea, and is present in many things the Burmese love, including condensed/evaporated (and highly sweetened and expensive) milk.

Here's the tea shop which I was describing above. It only started up last month, and is one of two in the camp. It's in a good position by a main road, but faces a couple of problems in meeting its 700-baht-a-day-turnover target (about 10 pounds a day minus costs in aid of the ABSDF; currently bringing in about 350-baht): it possibly being viewed by all other sections as the cafe belonging to the Burmese lot in Section 13, its small menu (four items), and the fact that this is a refugee camp and, as its owner pointed out, 'everyone is poor'.