Hard Boiled Egg Mystery Cracked!

I struggled making small talk with an Englishman called Derek during a break on the long bumpy bus trip to Bagan from Mandalay. I have no idea how this awkward, clerkish man had survived his tracksuited two weeks in Myanmar hating the food, the people, the landscape, the weather… As I tried to make conversational progress, these women walked past balancing baskets full of roasted, splayed small birds on their heads. I asked Derek what kinds of bird he thought they were and he replied with unexpected vigour, ‘Definitely NOT quails, their legs are too big.’ It turned out that Dezza was a quail fancier and had kept them as pets for many years. The tasty little hard-boiled eggs sold in the markets are, according to my man, definitely and without a doubt, quail’s eggs, and probably the eggs of the Chinese Painted Quail. So now I know.