Luang Prabang
Shortly before Wanderlust announced Luang Prabang as the world’s number one city tourist destination, a couple of us took a short break there. Luang Prabang is beautiful – the province is filled with some of the most stunning scenery I’ve ever seen and travelling through it I wished I could package it up and send it home for you all to experience, as photos just can’t do it justice.
The city itself is also very pretty, with most of its attractions sited in the main tourist district, encased on three sides my two rivers with just three roads running the length of it. Given this, you would think it would be easy even for me with my lousy sense of direction to find my way around. Sadly not and every night (and I have to say I wasn’t alone in my inability to navigate) we ritually lost our bearings and ended up walking along the wrong river to get back to our guesthouse – thankfully I do have some powers of observation and so we did learn to check the width of the river and if it was too wide and couldn’t see lights on the other side, we knew we had to cross to the other side of town. As a slight aside, since I’ve been in Lao, I have conducted an informal survey with people of all different nationalities and can conclude two things that seem to transcend national boundaries: whatever country you’re from, women need to turn the map round to face the direction they’re standing; and when lost, men refuse to ask for directions. So it’s not just in England.
The tourist area in Luang Prabang is a series of travel agents, guest house and temples and most of the places to eat provide a range of falang food, with good cheap Lao food being difficult to find unless you make the effort to walk the additional five minutes to somewhere away from the bright lights. Also, compared to Vientiane, most shop/restaurant staff have some English language. So it is understandable why this is such a popular tourist destination.
As with everything there is a downside. With every other building being a guest house, many of the local population have been pushed out of the area – between the beautifully constructed guesthouses you will often find a local house, usually of the traditional wooden-falling-apart-type structure, where a local family is clinging on to its space and livelihood. Many of these families, especially along the river roads, have found a space along the riverfront to put a seating area so they can run a restaurant, with the meals being prepared back at their homes. Some also have a trestle table and electric cooker set up and do the cooking on site (but still popping back home to top up on ingredients, as and when). I will never cease to be amazed how they manage to offer such an extensive menu with such limited cooking supplies. So, many local people are managing to make a living this way and those that don’t have the luxury of being near the river front have turned their living rooms into massage parlours. Which, by the way, if you’re ever tempted to have a Lao massage, heed my warning – it really hurts. It is definitely the first time I’ve ever been stood on during a massage! The government have now ceased to issue licences for guesthouses in the tourist area and so hopefully the plight of the locals will not worsen. Given that UNESCO have been responsible for putting in tarmacked/paved streets in Luang Prabang and making it the popular destination that it has become, local feeling is that at least the government have started to do something.
I have to admit that while we were there, we were bad tourists and didn’t really tick much off of the ‘things to see’ list, but we ate well and rested a lot. With some of the temples requiring not so cheap entry fees we saw what we needed to from the outside (we’re such cheapskates). We later found out that these fees go straight to the government and do not benefit the local community, so we felt better about not paying.
I was sceptical about Luang Prabang and initially a bit anti given the plethora of western restaurants and ‘all you can drink’ offers in some of the bars and I began to miss the relative anonymity of Vientiane. However, one small encounter made me pop my soap box away. When stopping for a coffee break (by the way, Lao has some of the nicest coffee I really can’t understand why Nescafe instant is so popular here) we met a couple of ladies on holiday from England, probably in their late sixties/early seventies and they were on the hunt for a simple chicken salad sandwich (something you’d be hard pushed to find in most places in Lao). They were so lovely and I think braver than many of their peers, to be making this trip. So I can only conclude that if people such as these two ladies are willing to make the journey over to explore and learn about Lao, if they want a chicken sandwich they should have a chicken sandwich.
Living with Communism
Vientiane Times proudly announced this month that the national assembly are continuing their efforts to create a state ruled by law and now has 90 laws in place (and yes, as I can’t seem to rid myself of HR I have read the Lao Labour Law, which is all neatly tied up in a 30 page document – perhaps UK could learn from this…). The government are committed to rule of law. Great. So, explain this…. I have now found a bit more information out about the land ownership for our village. The French set the village and the farmland up as part of its legacy when it left Lao and although the villagers do not have official paperwork, under Lao Land Law, due to the length of their occupation, the land, by rights, belongs to them. The village runs alongside the Mekong which the government is currently investing heavily in by building a new road to improve the riverside area – so it will be prime real estate once the development is complete. It is no surprise then that the Government are currently trying to take the land from villagers so they can sell it to a concession. The villagers are fighting this and have turned to the French embassy for help in their cause (and we can hope that one of the NGOs that runs the farming project may be able to help). All parties are limited in what they can do and villagers will face indefinite imprisonment if they make any form of protest. I’ll leave you to draw your own conclusions about the government’s commitment to rule of law, but it is really sad that people are not allowed a voice in these matters.
No elephant festival
It’s at this point I should be regaling you with stories of my weekend away to Paklai for the annual elephant festival which took place mid February. After a week of phone calls and rallying around to get enough people together to make it worth the cost of hiring a car and driver to get there, I was unable to make the journey due to an unscheduled illness. Previously, when we were in Luang Prabang, we wanted to make a trip out with elephants, but to ride them properly (not just sitting in the baskets on top of them) we had to take them bathing, which unfortunately the weather was far too cold for. So that’s now twice in one month that my attempts to get to see the elephants of Lao (aka ‘land of a million elephants’) have been thwarted. Perhaps I should take the hint and give up, but I won’t and I hope for another opportunity before I come home.
So instead of elephants, I’ll take this opportunity to introduce you to Lao food…
There are two basic rules to food here – get these right and you’re well on you’re way to eating Lao-style.
1- Anything that is animal or vegetable can be eaten – no part of either is left unused.
2- Anything of the above 2 categories can be eaten at any stage of development.
A Lao business leader has called for Lao food to be registered under IP regulations to protect the cuisine and avoid it being lost to other countries. The French have their cuisine on the UNESCO’s world heritage list and if the French can do it, why can’t Lao? However, at least as far as Europe is concerned, I suspect that some of their cuisine is unlikely to meet with EU food safety standards so they really needn’t worry about plagiarism from that particular corner of the globe.
Let’s start with fruit. Many fruits are eaten both unripe or ripe, which is strange given most Lao people don’t like sour foods. They love to eat an unripe mango or tamarind which not even the accompanying gua - a mix of chilli, salt and MSG - can take the edge off (although I admit I am addicted to unripe mango). Papaya salad, a favourite lunchtime dish is made fresh to order with unripe papaya. Padek - fermented fish - is used to make many dishes, including papaya salad. If you’re lucky, with the amount of chilli they put in it, your taste buds are destroyed before fish taste hits your palette. This does take some getting used to and I surprised myself when, after recovering from a small bout of food poisoning, I found that papaya salad had become a comfort food to me.
Noodle soup, another national favourite, is made with various organs floating around it, rounded off with a 2” block of dried blood. I have yet to build up the courage to taste the latter and I usually offer this to my Lao colleagues who are always keen to take it off my hands. Well, that’s one way to win friends and I hate to see good food go to waste! Incidentally, no food goes to waste in our office – all leftovers from noodle soup to sticky rice are saved for Ringo, our guard dog. However, he does draw the line at chilli paste as I found out when he escaped one day. After I rugby tackled him we used a bowl of it to entice him back to his pen. I did feel a bit guilty, luring him under false pretences, so I made sure the leftovers from my lunch were a bit more substantial than normal.
There is only one other food stuff that I’ve encountered so far that really makes me think twice is a sauce they make for laap and as a dipping sauce for some dishes. Bile. Firstly, I have to confess that I had eaten laap many times before finding this out. I made this discovery when on my recruitment trip in the south and I was helping prepare dinner with one of our NGO partner organisations. When they produced a sack from the inside of an animal (I assume cow, maybe pig – I didn’t want to get too close to find out), sliced it open and out poured a really unappetizing grey liquid. I have since discovered that bile is perfectly good for you and so I will continue to eat laap but am still unsure about the sauce. To be on the safe side I don’t touch any sauce that has a grey hue to it.
I have generally been good and eaten anything that is put in front of me. I am beginning to see the light on the Asian fixation with eating all parts of the fish and just to show willing I have managed to consume both eye and brain, under the safe tutelage of my Philippine friend. Embryo eggs are available on many street food stands and are served warm. They do taste like chicken… and egg at the same time. A strange taste/texture combo and not one I will repeat anytime soon.
I will try insects in due course but so far I haven’t come across any (at least not fried and on a plate). The UN is undertaking research in Lao at the moment with a view to developing insect farms in remote areas. People in these areas (which account for 80% of the Lao population) suffer a great deal, not only from thousands of hectares of unusable land due to UXOs, but also due to low incomes with some households living on 70 cents a day. Insect farming for consumption is being looked into as a possible sustainable source of protein in an attempt to combat malnutrition – with 50% of younger children suffering from malnutrition this will go some way to alleviate the problem. So it seems impolite to refuse to eat something that may improve mortality rates. I may, however, draw the line at anything that has furry legs.
End of the plague
For some inexplicable reason, Vientiane is plagued by mosquitos and our little open plan home in the farmland is particularly suffering. The past month I have been getting up to a scourge of mosquitos outside my bedroom door and fighting my way through to get my bathroom which is similarly infested. At the weekend my Lao colleague came round announcing that there is new technology that she wants to install to help deal with the infestation. I was a little surprised that any new technology had hit Lao but not being one to stand in the way of pioneering equipment (and delighted that my mosquito-swatting days were numbered) I looked on eagerly as they installed the cabling and finally unveiled the marvellous piece of machinery….
Might not look so conventional, but it certainly works.
