Advertisement
During our stay in Laos we were lucky to spend a lot of time with local friends and friends of friends. This gave us the chance to try a lot of different Lao food, from street food to higher end restaurant cuisine. Through this we also got an insight into Lao culture and family life.
Our impressions of Lao food is that it is very fresh, simple, healthy, and very tasty. We also found out that Lao people spend a lot of time cooking and sharing food with family and friends. They also love to share a drink or maybe ten – during our visit the Beer Lao flowed in an almost endless, happy stream.
We spent a lot of our time eating, drinking and chatting, in road side eateries, people’s gardens, during impromptu get togethers by the side of fishing holes and a variety of other very relaxed locations. The people we met were very friendly, easy going and went out of their way to make us feel comfortable and to try and communicate with us. Their soft, gentle smiles and polite attitudes really touched our hearts and we felt very welcomed even if we had to communicate
using a lot of broken English, snippets of Lao and hand signals. Communication was a challenge and a lot of fun – something that both ourselves and our new Lao friends found very funny.
Sticky rice is the staple dish. It is a different type of rice grain to the normal rice we consume boiled, steamed or fried. They eat it for breakfast, with tamarind, they have it for lunch and dinner. They dip in it sauces and wrap around other foods. Lao people also warn you that it is easy to over indulge on sticky rice and it is rather fattening.
Larb or larp is another favourite dish. This is a meat salad and can be made with pork, beef, chicken, duck or even seafood. We tried many versions and found it to be one of our favorites. Another was papaya salad. Our local friends would always get two different versions of this salad, one very spicy one for them and a tame version for us "falangs" which I still found rather hot, but when I tried their version I realised how tame ours really was.
One delicacy that I could not come to grips with
was a salad that was prepared floating on a bed of congealed ducks blood. It is also something that is often prepared in parts of Vietnam. We were told it was a favourite with Lao women because they like the boost of iron that it gives them. Lorenza tried some, but I could not bring myself to do so.
Over drinks a favoured snack was buffalo hide. It came in long strips. First the hair was singed off, then the strip was beaten hard with a hammer to tenderise it and finally it was grilled over a charcoal BBQ. It was a bit like beef jerky. Wok fried grasshopper was not bad washed down with some Beer Lao. They were crispy and not unlike eating roasted nuts. On another occasion we tried wok fried kaffir lime leaves with a few beers and this was interesting and a refreshing taste. The leaves were fried very quickly in very hot oil. Another common drinking snack were strips of fried liver on rings of bamboo strips.
Fresh fruit was abundant, durian, jackfruit, rambutan, lycee, and our all time favourite fruit – mangosteen. Every meal was finished off with lots of fruit
Mangosteen
bottom left - best fruit you could ever tasteand I could not get enough of it.
On the eve of our departure from Lao, we went shopping with friends at a local market and purchased the makings of our farewell meal. Lots of fresh fish (still alive as it was put into plastic bags to take home), a huge bag of Escargot de Mekong (my name for some kind of river snails), lots of vegetables, fruits and of course plenty of Beer Lao. Our meal that night was wonderful, all prepared in the most basic of outdoor kitchens. We shared the meal together sitting on the floor on a big bamboo mat and it was wonderful to be able to thank our hosts in this way.
Drinking is definitely a favourite hobby in Lao. Beer Lao must be the most successful company in all the land. There are some customs associated with beer drinking in Lao that are a bit different. For example, when drinking people often share the same glass, drink the contents in one go and pass it back to be refilled for the next person. The glass is refilled by the same person each time and also topped up with ice because the
Prawns in spicy sauce
at the Million Gold Lake beer is warm.
On other occasions each person had their own glass and as they were filled they would offer the Lao toast of “ngoc” and often “bot, bot, bot” which meant down the hatch. We had many long sessions, sitting with various friends drinking Beer Lao in the humid afternoon. It sure made sleeping a lot easier.
Mind you Beer Lao is available just about anywhere you can think of in Lao. You could make a call on your cell phone and a case would be delivered by motorcycle, with a big bag of ice to almost anywhere – a fishing hole, the middle of a farm paddock, your back garden, down by the river at sunset. Wherever people wanted to gather Beer Lao would find you.
Lao whiskey was interesting, we tried a few different versions. The one in the photo was at a roadside eatery in Vang Vieng. It was aged with lots of herbs, I think there was lemon grass and ginseng, the other herbs I could not recognise. There was also some kind of insect floating in the jar, I did not dare ask what it was. The owner insisted we try
his whiskey and told us that it was a customery greeting to share a few glassed. Naturally, we took a few shots and it was surprisingly good. One of the people we were with bought a pack of the herbal mixture that was added to the whiskey because he said it was a different mix to what he used back home and he liked it.
Our food and drink experiences were wonderful and we really enjoyed trying new things and trying not to say no to anything that was offered to us. I think our Lao friends appreciated that we were willing to give most things ago. Plus, they also exposed us to a much more “local” food experience than if we had travelled on our own.
Thanks so much – Ngoc!!!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.302s; Tpl: 0.016s; cc: 37; qc: 143; dbt: 0.181s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.4mb
liliram
liliram
You tried the grasshoppers!
Did you, really? There is a certain place back here where that is a delicacy. I have not tried it myself though. But Laos is def in my list. Ahhh, so many places to go to. And I'm not even done with my own country! Thanks for sharing this.