On Thursday night a number of brave abroaders ventured to the markets off the main street to try some authentic street food. We had heard the reputation of the delicious fare, but many of us erred on the side of caution and found a Thai restaurant on the main drag.
The steel-stomached travelers among us threw caution to the wind and dined with the flies and a few other backpackers at a long bench in a hot, crowded alley. The skewered meats and fish were scrumptious and the various noodle dishes and spring rolls were piled high on our plates. The street food is 10,000 kip per plate--roughly $1.25 and fresh fruit smoothies are about $1. After dinner we hit the night market for handmade clothing and watercolor paintings from the local artists.
On Friday morning we explored many of the 32 Buddhist temples here in Luang Prabang. We watches late morning prayer sessions, spoke to monks during their daily free time and visited some vacant temples. We're looking forward to waking up early one morning while we are here to give the monks alms (their daily ration of rice).
In the afternoon we visited Big Brother Mouse, an organization that we've arranged to work with in the upcoming days. We will be helping Lao children with reading English during their holiday break from school.
Friday evening brought about an exciting excursion for the lead study abroaders: Lao cooking school. We took a 2 hour class concentrating on the traditional cuisine of Luang Prabang--the northern city situated between the Mekong and Khan Rivers.
Our instructors Leng Lee and Phia Yang demonstrated how to make several dishes:
Tom Chaeow Pha (fish soup with smokey eggplant)
Pork Lap (a spicy meat salad served cold)
Panaeng Gai (chicken and pork in coconut milk with chili paste)
Luak Puk (mixed vegetables with spicy tomato chutney)
Luang Prabang Jeowbong (a signature chili paste famous and unique to this region)
Sticky rice
We broke into stations (teams of two) and made ourselves two of the dishes for dinner. After cooking we enjoyed our food while our instructors did our dishes for us! We are now experts at Lao traditional cooking, and each have a cookbook to bring home with us.
It's been a fantastic few days in Laos thus far and we have more exciting excursions planned for the coming days--stay tuned!
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