Northern speciality khao soi is already a familiar sight in Thailand. But in Myanmar, they also have khao swè. How could the two noodle dishes that look and sound so similar taste so different?
The names may sound almost interchangeable, but behind the similarities is a diverging story of borders, migration and cultural memory.
Myanmar cuisine was once unfamiliar to the world, mostly because of the isolation the country experienced through decades of authoritarian rule.
However, in recent years, Myanmar restaurants have been dotting many countries, Thailand included, adding to the country’s already vibrant culinary diversity.
For Bangkok in particular, where Myanmar restaurants and tea shops are becoming increasingly visible, foods like khao swè are doing more than introducing diners to a neighbouring cuisine. They are windows to Myanmar — once known as Burma — as a nation.
Political scientist Joseph Nye’s concept of soft power describes the ability to influence through attraction and persuasion rather than coercion or payment. Culture is one of its principal sources.
In food diplomacy, influence does not come through government policy or economic pressure, but through the appeal of a country’s culture.
For Myanmar, this diplomacy is largely informal.
For much of its modern history, Myanmar has been relatively isolated from the outside world. Even though Thailand and Myanmar share a border, many Thais have historically encountered their neighbour through politics, migrant labour or conflict rather than through everyday life.
That is beginning to change, partly through the people who have crossed the border and brought pieces of home with them.
Tun, who is from Taunggyi in Shan State, has lived in Thailand for more than a decade. He remembers a time when speaking imperfect Thai could lead people to look down on him.
Since the coup in his homeland, he says, attitudes have shifted as Thais have encountered a broader spectrum of Myanmar society — students, professionals, business owners and younger migrants alongside the labourers who were already part of Thailand’s economy. That visibility complicates older stereotypes.
Khaosoi Shwe Taung, where Tun works, serves as an introduction to the many places and identities that make up Myanmar.
Sippachai Kunnuwong, owner of Khaosoi Shwe Taung, revealed the philosophy of the eatery: “Rather than simply selling Burmese food, it makes a point of explaining where dishes come from. Shan noodles from Shan State and Shwe Taung khao swè from central Myanmar.”
For a country made up of an array of ethnic and regional identities, that distinction is important.
“Myanmar culture cannot be reduced to a single cuisine any more than it can be reduced to a single ethnicity. Food becomes a map — one that allows customers to encounter places such as Shan State or Shwe Taung before they may ever see them geographically,” said Sippachai.
The same table, then, can work in two directions.
For a Burmese customer, it can preserve memory. For a Thai customer, it can create a first encounter.
Restaurants and tea shops are becoming places where Myanmar nationals keep hold of home while Thai diners meet a country they might otherwise know mainly through headlines. The exchange is informal, personal and, importantly, two-way.
But the cultural exchange taking place here is not entirely symbolic. It is also tied to migration and labour.
In Bangkok’s Phra Khanong district, Ben — who runs a local Burmese tea shop — describes a neighbourhood that has become increasingly crowded with Myanmar residents. Many Myanmar nationals in Bangkok, he says, have settled around the area, while significant numbers work across the food industry — preparing ingredients, cooking and serving.
Here, food diplomacy looks very different from the carefully constructed experience of an upscale restaurant.
There is no need to explain Myanmar to the people drinking tea inside. The shop functions instead as a piece of Myanmar transplanted into Bangkok: a place where familiar words, habits and foods require no translation.
But its existence changes the surrounding neighbourhood nonetheless.
A tea shop sign, a Burmese menu or a gathering of customers after work makes Myanmar culture part of Bangkok’s everyday visual landscape. Soft power does not always require a campaign. Sometimes familiarity itself is enough.
The political upheaval in Myanmar has accelerated that presence.
Ben describes Thailand as an obvious first destination for many people leaving Myanmar. The nation is geographically close, comparatively affordable and offers more opportunity than many other low-cost alternatives.
But migration is not the only way Myanmar food is being introduced to Bangkok. Some businesses are also deliberately translating the culture for audiences who may have little previous connection to it.
Understanding this means looking back to downtown Yangon in 2014, when founder Htet May Oo of Rangoon Tea House noticed that Burmese food occupied a curious position in the city. It was deeply embedded in everyday life, in neighbourhood curry shops and food venues, but rarely presented in the kinds of spaces associated with business dinners, dates or international hospitality.
His response was to take one of Myanmar’s most ordinary institutions — the tea shop — and place it in a different setting.
That shift allowed a broader question about cultural soft power, taking it beyond what parts of a culture travel to how they are presented and to whom.
“Rangoon Tea House in the Thai capital is significantly more expensive than a traditional tea shop,” Htet readily acknowledged that distinction.
“Its pricing reflects not simply the food, but rent, service, ingredients and the wider dining environment. In Bangkok, the same meal is roughly 20-30% more expensive than in Yangon.”
The result is a version of Burmese food positioned for a different social and economic space — one that can be encountered by middle-class Thai diners, international visitors and Burmese customers in the same room. Htet estimates that the Bangkok clientele is divided relatively evenly between the three groups.
The restaurant’s interior is part of that translation. “By adding Burmese textiles, antique frames from Yangon and furniture made by long-time carpenters in Myanmar, the space is reorganised to express authentic Burmese culture in a Bangkok dining space,” Htet said.
This is not simply decoration. It shows how cultural diplomacy often depends on selection.
No restaurant can represent an entire country, particularly one as ethnically and regionally diverse as Myanmar. What Rangoon Tea House offers is a carefully assembled version of Burmese identity, one that emphasises colour, craftsmanship and urban modernity.
That image exists alongside, and at times in tension with, Myanmar more commonly visible in Thai public discourse through migrant labour, political instability and conflict.
Htet himself has long thought about food in these terms. In a 2017 talk, he described Burmese cuisine as a potential tool of “culinary diplomacy” — a way of influencing how outsiders perceive the country through culture rather than politics.
Bangkok makes that idea especially significant. Many of the people encountering the restaurant have little previous connection to Myanmar. At its Iconsiam branch, Htet estimates that 60-70% of customers had not previously shown much interest in the country.
“But whether through an upscale restaurant, a neighbourhood tea shop or a small stall in a shopping mall, the process is similar. Food creates a space in which Myanmar can be encountered outside the political narratives that have often defined it,” noted Htet.
Perhaps the clearest symbol of that process is not a Burmese dish at all.
It is falooda. The dessert travelled into Myanmar through older exchanges with India and the wider Persian world.
Once there, it did not remain unchanged. Myanmar made it its own, adapting the dessert with ingredients and preferences that gave it a distinctly local character.
Now, as more Myanmar residents build lives in Thailand, that story may be beginning again. What was once imported, adapted and made local could become part of a new Thai-Burmese food culture.
Cultural diplomacy does not always arrive through an embassy, a summit or an official campaign. Sometimes it arrives quietly in a neighbourhood tea shop or in a glass, with jelly and milk, a spoonful of egg pudding and a piece of bread resting on top.