LUANG PRABANG FOR YOUR BUCK

Forty minutes after leaving Vientiane, we touched down at dinky Xieng Khouang airport and waited around with all the other passengers while two guys – probably flunkies from US Airways – appeared to be sorting the bags one by one on the tarmac. Luang Prabang is small, but this seemed a bit too modest an airport for such a well-touristed destination and the map on the wall looked nothing like the one in our books. Yes, we had hopped off at the wrong stop. Fortunately, the baggage dudes’ pace allowed us enough time to walk back out onto the tarmac and reboard the plane which would eventually land in Luang Prabang. Security is a bit lax to say the least.

Cute. Charming. Sweet as Solvang except with French colonial architecture and better food. The heart of the UNESCO protected city rests on a peninsula between the Mekong and Khan rivers. We can only imagine what it looked like only five or ten years ago. Now, it’s filled with white table clothed cafes, shops with pinpoint lighting and designer accessories, wine bars, tour operators, guest houses, crepe stands, and the surviving older businesses that only five years ago were the norm. It is not the “real” Laos we’ve come to explore, but we confess to enjoying the Continental vibe at a developing world price nonetheless.

Latest food discoveries: pork-stuffed bamboo; banana stuffed sticky rice balls with coconut; fried bread puffs with sesame. “Stuffed” seems to be the operative word here as that seems to be often how we feel. And just to be sure we keep up the momentum, we’re taking a full-day cooking class tomorrow.

Oh, spectacular sights too.

Click on thumbnail of the temple for more photos from Luang Prabang.

MONKS AT THE ZOO

The books all talk about the hundreds of monks in saffron robes, streaming forth from dozens of wats each morning with their “begging” baskets. The alms they collect from people who rise at dawn to make their daily offering of rice is all the monks will eat for the day. It is supposed to be both a moving and humbling experience for participant and observer alike.

Some acquaintances of ours said they had decided to forgo the experience because, not being practicing Buddhists, they felt it would be disingenuous. Secondly, they had heard about monks becoming ill from inferior rice sold to tourists. We were of the same mindset and decided we would be passive, respectful observers, keeping a quiet distance and bridging it only with our telephoto lenses.

We rose before dawn and strolled a few short blocks from our guest house to the main street. We expected to see tourists like ourselves. We were not prepared for the spectacle of minivans unloading scores of tour groups; pre-set offering “stations” (Santa Barbarians, think blankets and chairs on Solstice Parade morning) and guides shouting instructions about how to bow and give rice; people standing quite literally in the path of the monks or just a few feet from them with cameras cocked. It was quite literally a zoo. Appalling.

COOKING SCHOOL

Nine of us boarded the tuk-tuk to the market with our instructors Leng and Phia. We buzzed through the market more hurriedly than we would have liked, but another Taiwanese-Dutch woman and I peppered (no pun intended) Leng with questions. We returned to the school for a little tea and bowls of fabulous sweet, salty, spicy pretzel-like things while the instructors prepared for class.

Their accents were nearly impossible and these guys do not have the personality to be on the Food Network or even local cable, but they can cook. They demonstrated a few dishes at a time, and then we returned to our respective stations and to recreate each dish. Alan and I worked surprisingly well together. He did all the measuring, of course; I did all the slicing and chopping. He made sure we followed the recipe precisely; I did the plating.

We consumed five dishes (plus sticky rice and the best chili paste we’ve tasted anywhere in the world) for lunch and dinner. Click on the thumbnail of us to see more photos of our creations and classmates.

SHOPPING

The night market is clean and bright and goes on for blocks. We buy our dinner along the crowded “buffet” alley. An all-you-can-heap plate costs us $1.20 which we complement with another dollar’s worth of grilled chicken and Alan’s diet soda. We are fully sated and can well afford to shop. The young sellers talk amongst themselves or on cell phones and start their prices too high. The older Hmong women understand the economics of volume selling and their ROI. My favorite just keeps heaping the goods and dropping the price each time I look toward Alan who doesn’t have to work at feigning disinterest as he reads a book on his Droid. We do the requisite schmoozing – “I make this one” “Ooh, very beautiful” “Special discount, Madam” “Just looking tonight” “This one lucky for you” “Sorry, I’m a stingy bitch and my sister doesn’t want another scarf” – but quickly move into serious negotiations. I score well. The old woman has had a good night compared to the other couple hundred merchants selling pretty much the same stuff.  Click on her photo to see more from the market.

MONEY MATTERS

Because of the exchange rate (1 kip = .00012 U.S. dollars; 1 million kip = $125) and they don’t drop all those zeroes, it’s at first a bit disconcerting to get the dinner check. Our second dinner in Laos, which included three dishes, sticky rice, an amuse bouche, and a bottle of lao lao, came to 85,000 kip. The following night, we ate at a place that was more upscale, heavy on atmosphere – quite charming actually – but light on quality, for a whopping 100,000 kip. It just wasn’t worth the extra $2.75. Still doing the math? Divide the number of kip by 8 and move the decimal point 3 places. Easy, eh?