Laos, 2017: Food

The Mekong River originates in China, runs through the middle of Laos, then along the border of Laos, Thailand, and Vietnam, through the middle of Cambodia, and finally enters the South China Sea in southern Vietnam. My first day in Luang Prabang, I sat for a few hours at a lovely, quiet, authentic waterfront restaurant enjoying a couple of drinks and a delicious Lao beef and bamboo shoot soup. Honestly, among the best things I've ever eaten!

Speaking of authentic--I'm not sure, since the menu included English, but I saw loads of locals in this place, across the street from my hotel in Vientiane: Lao chicken rice soup.


Many places in the world have their specialties--Beijing Duck springs to mind, or Georgia barbeque, or Kobe beef ... Lauang Prabang has a particular variety of sausage. Hell, I hear you say, sausage goes back to the freaking Romans, big effing deal! Yeah, you are correct as far as you go, but I bet you've never had Luang Prabang sausage, have you?

You have to trust me on this. Luang Prabang style sausage is the best you'll ever have. The eating street is where you'll find the real deal. There it is in the middle of the table.


You point out what you want, pay your money, and sit down at the nearest table. The side dish that comes with the sausage is Hmong-style pickled vegetables. It's basically Lao kimchi. Be careful! Hidden within my particular serving was a whitish pepper that is the hottest thing I've ever eaten my life. Still, it's absolutely brilliant! I had this dish also in Vientiane at the fine place near the Lamphu fountain I mentioned before, Khop Chai Deu:


No hot-as-fuck pepper hidden in their Hmong veggies. Another delicious meal I had there was Lao beef along with fried green beans. Laos is the only place I've been in Asia which offers string or green beans, like you might get back home. Though they're always stir fried. Which is not a bad thing.


The typical LP eating street experience is to either pick what you want and pay accordingly, or to get the "buffet", one plate, one serving, one price:


As a young youth in Thailand, I remember well street food super-thin pancakes made in woks, filled with Carnation sweetened condensed milk, folded over into cones. Not so much woks anymore, just flat griddles. Mangoes, bananas, Nutella, etc:


And here is coconut "pancake", lovely:


Some snacks:


Beer:


And as I crack a Korean maekchu, I end my blogging about my trip to Laos! Thanks for visiting my patch, Dear Reader, and Happy Travels!

Laos, 2017: Temples

Temples, Buddhist, Catholic, Hindu, whatever, are usually beautiful examples of human craftmanship. They are also a window into humans' ability to deceive themselves. Case in point, "That Dam Stupa" (not a joke) located in a quiet roundabout in Vientiane. Legend has it that this stupa is/was inhabited by a seven-headed naga, mythical water-snake, whose job was to protect the Lao people and all the gold that covered the stupa.


I know what you're thinking: where's the gold? Thai invaders took it in 1820.

Anyway. I woke my first morning in Laos, had a decent breakfast in the charming garden of the Hotel Lao, and ventured forth. I almost immediately stumbled across a temple, Vat Inpeng. It is quite nice.


Near the bank of the river, I found Vat Chanthaboury, largely elephant-themed.


I'm not sure who the guys are on the small stupa detail, but they seem quite modern.

But the temple I wanted most to see was Hor Phakeo. It was built in the mid-1500s by a certain King Setthathirath when he moved the capital from Luang Prabang to Vientiane to house the storied Emerald Buddha. The Lao, the Thai and the Khmer (Cambodians) have had war after war, invasion after invasion, over this two foot tall carving, that's not even made of emerald (refer to sentence #2 of this post).

Still, it spent about two hundred years in Hor Phakeo (or Haw Phra Kaew or similar) before the Thais won it back. Today it resides in a similarly-named temple on the grounds of the Royal Palace in Bangkok. Although the Cambodias claim to have it too.


Luang Prabang has its own non-gold coated stupa, across the main drag from the Royal Palace.


But the town has some other temples, including the famously "active" Wat Mai, from whence the monks decend before daybreak to the riverbanks for alms-giving every morning. I never managed to wake up in time to see this spectacle, I did get some interesting shots of the temple itself.


Actually, I may have mixed some of those up with the other Buddhist temple just down the road, but I'm sure the ones below are from Wat Mai.


There is also Wat That Luang, apparently the best of the lot, but it was quite a long ways up a hill and I was pretty much templed-out by the time I heard about it. Next time, Luang Prabang, next time.

Laos, 2017: Vientiane

Taxi from the airport was 57,000 Kip, about 7 USD. Immediately prior to that, though, I made the stupidest mistake I've ever made in my travels. I made sure to count my money at the currency exchange, and it was correct. I double checked because a girl ahead of me claimed to be short-changed by 100 bucks. I was so relieved I walked out--and left my suitcase just sitting there.

I realized it while about to line up at the taxi desk, and rushed back in. It was still there, so it was a very cheap mistake. Could have been a bad scene, though.

Inauspicious beginning, but on the whole, a lovely trip. I really only visited two places in Laos, and if I come again, I'll pretty much skip Vientiane. Loud, dirty, kind of smelly, frankly, a typical big southeast Asian city. Aside from temples (a separate post later), there's really not a lot to see here.

National Museum

The museum cost an extra 10,000 (doubling the fee--to $2.50) to take pictures, and it is set in a fabulous old French colonial style building. Sadly, there is a stretch of rooms on the second floor where weak flooring borders on dangerous. The exhibits are pretty tired stuff, mostly, and the "modern Lao" displays seem untouched since the seventies. In fact, the whole place seems untouched since the seventies. And, rather like the National Museum of Vietnam, little is made of the setting.

One of the most interesting locales of Laos is the "plain of jars", the site of hundreds of large granite jars or bowls, carved in the neolithic era, whose purpose is still a matter of debate. Though archaeologists are settling on some kind of funerary purpose. The first two shots below are a small, reconstructed jar, for a baby, and a large one, presumably for an adult:


Below is a group of tribal artifacts, which remind me of what I saw at Mari Mari village in Malaysia, and below that, some musical instruments tucked in a hallway by the stairs almost as an afterthought.


Here is the "Peacock houda", an elephant chair for processions, still--according to the card--used on occasion today. And a typical Buddha, partly veneered in gold foil as offering:


COPE
From 1964 to to 1973, the US military dropped more than two million tons of ordnance on Laos in 580,000 bombing missions, making the country probably the most heavily bombed place on the planet. Largely, the purpose of this "secret war" was to disrupt the Ho Chi Minh Trail used by the Viet Cong. Of course, the bombing was incredibly disruptive to the lives of the Lao people as well, and sadly, there are vast quantities of unexploded ordnance still today. Some 20,000 people have been killed or maimed by these UXO since the end of the war.

COPE is involved in a multipronged effort to provide prosthetics and retraining for those injured by UXO, to assist in the effort to locate and clear dangerous areas, and to educate the public. Admission is free, though it's a bit of a ride out of downtown--25,000 kip there, 40,000 back.


Above are sculptures made from expended shells, and below is a display showing how many cluster "bomblets" are released from one shell. The displays are generally good, but the numerous videos scattered around are really excellent. You can learn more at www.copelaos.org.


Enterprising Lao have learned to melt down the high quality metals of the ordnance and make various useful items--I bought some spoons and chopsticks (the traditional Korean "sucho" eating utensils, as gifts).

Hangouts
I was told by more than one person that the place to hang out is the Lamphu fountain. I was, quite frankly, less than impressed by everything from the music to the food to the lack of other people. Tourist trap. In the second picture, you see a place more to my liking, the "No Name Bar", where I am waiting for other folks to show up--and inevitably they did, from the saffer English teacher in Thailand on a visa run to the Brit who runs a skydiving school that shuts down in winter to the cute twentysomething girls seeing the world.


It was located a five minute walk from my hotel, Hotel Lao, which was a nice enough place to recommend. The breakfast is included, and while not great, is good enough, and you can eat it situated in this lovely garden with a pond.


From journal, Dec. 29:

My last day in Vientiane I didn't do much except eat and drink. I went back to Khop Chai Deu [good restaurant near Lamphu fountain] to get my Japanese handkerchief and have some Lao beef. In the evening I ate at Tango, and had more beef, French style, with pepper sauce. Both were awesome. I went to bed early, after a last visit to No Name Bar.
My day yesterday was mainly consumed by the trip north in a minivan, which would seem like an easy day, but the tension mounted as we rode into the mountains. There was one stretch on the highest and steepest passage where the road was completely washed away. Completely. That was scary, though not as bad as that trip across Palawan after the typhoon.

We had a rest stop before the arduous part of the journey began, and I snapped this shot of picturesque mountains, little knowing what was in store.


One last pic, the standard tuk-tuk of Laos. The motorcycle is more or less built onto the frame of the passenger compartment, passengers always sit facing the side, they seem to be required to have a spare tire and a decal announcing the maximum number of passengers.


One day, maybe I'll do a post comparing all the different styles of tuk-tuk type conveyances of SE Asia.