Loving Life in Laos!

Note: this blog entry covers both yesterday and today.

Glad to reports that we're happy and healthy and enjoying the hell out of ourselves. We really love this part of the world and, come to think of it, we may never leave. That said, we've spent the past two days exploring the wonders of Luang Prabang.

The first day was truly a lazy day: spent further exploring the nooks and crannies of this sleepy little town…checking out almost every shop in town and finding some magnificently crafted silks and woodwork. We stopped for lunch at a highly-recommended restaurant/hotel called Apsara, right on the banks of the Nam Om river (on the other side of the Mekong) and had some of the best food so far (don’t we keep saying that?)

We headed back to the hotel briefly, stopping along the way to pick up our laundry at a local woman’s house for a whopping $1. Take that, overpriced hotel laundry service!

Our fairly uneventful day was punctuated by another great dinner…this time at in an old Thai-style house at a restaurant called Indochine Spirit. It was a tremendous mix of both Thai and Lao cuisine. Each dish that came was better than the last—and the whole meal (which consisted of 5 dishes and beer) cost us $8.

Next day (Tuesday) we woke up early and headed into town to try and set up a tour at the local Elephant Nature rescue. Chris and Mark went to one in Chiang Mai a few weeks ago and really enjoyed it and thought we should see something like that while we’re here. Chris is a huge animal lover to say the least (having been a dog breeder for 20+ years and having been on safaris multiple times now)…so she was thrilled at the prospect of seeing more elephants. Unfortunately, the tour was booked up for the day—so we did some shifting-around of plans and arranged to do the Elephant tour on Thursday morning (at 7AM!) and return just in time to catch our flight to Vietnam. Nothing like cutting it close!

We did some more shopping and grabbed another quick bite at Apsara (love their babaganoush—it’s unworldly!) and Mark, David + Billy headed back to the hotel for our spa treatments while Chris stayed in town to do (yes) more shopping!

We finished up our night with a cooking class at our hotel, which was quite awesome. We leaned to cook 3 different Lao dishes: minced pork and vermicelli spring rolls, pork with red coconut curry, and prawns with red chili and basil. The course itself was a bit of a whirlwind. We met the sous chef and her helper on the outside patio and all the food was prepped in bowls to cook. No introductions, no history of Lao food, just turn on the burners and get that food cookin! It was like having a cooking lesson while on speed…everything just flew by and onions were flying across the table for one dish, while carrots were being chopped up for another. While this was probably as close as we could get to cooking in an actual restaurant kitchen, we got a little spoiled last year in Chiang Mai with our cooking class there…where we actually had the whole day with our teacher and learned all about the process behind Thai cooking.

All that said, however, we will note that those spring rolls we made have become stuff of legend now, with David, in particular, literally dreaming about them at night.

We have an early morning tomorrow to meet up with the elephants and, best of all, to ride them! I’m sure that our next entry will be full of fantastic stories!

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