Laap Neua, or Lao beef salad

 

A couple of brief asides from the travelogue, I'm posting these two as a reminder of how good the food was over there. Both are slightly Westernised versions of South East Asian dishes, and are delicious, to my mind. I write more food stuff at my personal blog, Antipathti, if you fancy a read.

 

Or larb, or larp, or laab. Bless the confusion of translating from a foreign alphabet to the western. Etymology aside, this is one of my favourite meals in the world. This version came close to the delicious flavour when I've had it cooked for me, and has the advantage of taking about 20 minutes, with very little prep.

The mix of herbs is delicious, and makes up a huge part of the dish. I have made this with strips of steak. Traditionally it would be minced beef (or pork, chicken, white fish or any other deceased animal) but I like the steak strips as a little westernisation of the meal.

If you have an extra 10 minutes, dry fry a small handful of rice before you start, grind it up in a pestle and mortar, and add this to the pan too for extra authenticity. It's called Khao Kua and is a big thing in Southeast Asian cuisine.

Ingredients

Ingredients are per person

• Frying Steak
• Spring onions
• Bird eye or other small powerful chilli
• Mint- A large bundle torn into big chunky pieces, insofar as leaves can be chunky
• Thai/holy basil- A big handful again, roughly chopped. You can get it in Waitrose or Asian food shops. It's sweeter than normal basil.
• Coriander- a handful, roughly chopped
• Lime- juice and grated zest of half
• Nam Pla (fish sauce) 1 tsp
• Chilli sauce- 1tsp and use sweet chilli if you like
• 4 or 5 large whole lettuce leaves, to serve.

Method Chop the spring onion and chilli finely and cut the beef into thin strips. Chop the herbs as well to save panic later.

Vientiane (part two)- 6th to 15th November

A return to Vientiane. Originally we had planned to travel down to the 4000 Islands in the South, but were advised not to with the onset of Typhoon Haiyan, and the continued case of... ahem... digestive system delicacy (WHO KNEW THIS COULD LAST 2 WEEKS!)

As a result, this will be a shorter entry than usual. Firstly, this might have been the nicest hotel of our entire stay- the Vientiane Garden Hotel. Populated by a nice mix of travellers and Thai holidaymakers, with incredibly comfortable rooms (an essential when you're unable to leave!).

Secondly, I haven't gotten across just why we loved this city quite so much- I've found a nice article by somebody else which I hope sums it up better!

It really is amazing- I wish we could have had at least another week here, it is such a warm, interesting and laid back place.

Vang Vieng- 31st October to 5th November

What better way to spend Halloween that with a drive through the mountains with a certified psychopath. 15 terrified tourists in a minibus taking corners that a man and his goat might struggle with at about 70mph! After 2 hours of unbridled terror, we arrived in Vang Vieng, a tiny town, nestled between enormous mountains, with a river running through the center.

The view from our room.

 The town is very chilled, with most of the bars laying out the tables as beds that you lie down on, with cushions and such, and nearly all of them show endless repeats of Friends, South Park or Family Guy to lure in homesick tourists! The town used to be more of a piss up paradise, with tubing- literally floating down the river from bar to bar in a tractor inner tube- being the town's main selling point, but the river front bars have been closed as a result of one too many drownings! You can still go tubing, minus the booze, and it was a great way to see the gorgeous scenery (sadly we didn't get pictures due to the camera not playing well with water!)

The last waterfront bar!

You can also walk out into the mountains and explore, in what is an incredibly wild and beautiful corner of Laos, although it is very easy to get lost before you even get near the mountains if you are an idiot. (Ben is).

YEAH COWS!

 Unfortunately, the week then took a turn for the worse, as the dreaded traveller's stomach struck- thank god we had a nice hotel, and a pharmacist who spoke good English! As a result, the following few days are probably a little unpleasant to report (and no, we took no pictures of the view...) but the smallness of the town was an advantage, as we could get takeaway when we needed it, and were never more than a panicked sprint from relief.

Even so, we ended with a gorgeous dinner by the river, with steamed chicken in banana leaf, lemongrass skewers and sticky mango rice.

As there are a lack of pictures, to finish, here are a couple of lovely bits of 'Engrish' from menus:

Never let me down yet...

Vientiane (part one)- 27th to 30th October

After crossing the border on foot, we arrived in our third Communist country, Laos! A quick bus over the Friendship Bridge, and a tuktuk into town and we were in the Lao capital, Vientiane. The word capital almost feels inappropriate here- even city feels strong, as it's so laid back here, it is more like a small town, save for the inevitable Asian lunatic traffic!

Our first hotel was seconds away from the Nam Phou Fountain square, where live musicians performed evening.

Nam Phou fountain

The center of town is set at the edge of the Mekong river, so you are looking back over into Thailand as you walk along the front. All along the front there is an enormous market, selling pretty much everything you can think of. Every single stand is red, and it paints the whole front that colour. On the day we arrived, there were also enormous public exersise classes going on, with hundreds of people taking part, which was very entertaining to watch. Especially when you're still sleep deprived and bewildered from the journey the night before!

The night market

The large part of the first two days was spent in the Kafkaesque nightmare of ferrying back and forth to the Thai Consulate to obtain our visas to return and explore the South of Thailand. However, the journey there gives you a view of the impressive Patuxai, a Lao copy of the Arc de Triumph, made slightly larger. This was built using concrete the Americans had donated for a airstrip (possibly out of guilt, the country was badly hurt by the Vietnam war, despite not officially being involved), and as a result, has the amusing nickname of 'The Worlds Tallest Runway'. It's still impressive the fifth time you go past!

Patuxai

Lao cuisine is also amazing! Their national dish is Laap, a mix of minced meat (traditionally eaten raw), sweet basil and mint that is delicious. Beerlao is great ('Beer of the Wholehearted People' is a great slogan too). Laolao, a blindingly strong rice whisky is very popular, and does this;

Before

After. It tastes like burning.

The best restaurants in Vientiane appear to be the worst looking- on one street there are five consecutive cafes all cooking amazing food for around 10,000 kip (just shy of a quid), under a crudely fashioned covering made out of old canvas and beer adverts, with kitchens made from a gas bottle and some knocked together metal, serving barbecued meats, spring rolls, fresh coconut and fish caught 30 metres away in the Mekong. Not a bad meal between them.

Great restaurants- they look terrible!

And despite very strict laws prohibiting such recreations, we were offered opium, and the services of a transvestite. Which was kind of them.

Ayutthaya- 23rd-26th October... and the train of doom!

Firstly, sorry for the lack of updates.  To spoil the surprise, we're now in Melbourne, and have been busy looking for gainful employment! Should speed up now we're settling!

Ayutthaya was our next stop, a mere 7 hours on the bus down the road! We got there, and our hotel was... limited. We decided that sleep there would be impossible, so elected to move down the road to a nicer (and cheaper) establishment. This took us till midnight, and Ben got chased by a pack of feral dogs. Ben insists these were  tiger sized Rottweilers. Jenny is certain it was a pack of fluffy Shihtzus. The truth may never come out!

Regrettably, Ayutthaya was probably the first disappointment of the journey. Mainly concrete and traffic, with none of the charm of the prior few towns. I think that we both had a spot of temple fatigue after the charm of Chiang Mai, and the Indiana Jones scope and size of Sukhothai. As a result, we were much less snap happy- hence the lack of photos herein!

Due to the length of Thai visas, and that we wanted a change of scenery, we decided that our next stop would be a visa run to Laos. We booked onto the night train to the capital Vientiane, and readied ourselves for the 15 hour journey! As we had checked out of the hotel at midday, we had an 11 hour wait to even go to the station, so spent the day idling and eating- our favourite pastimes!

Waiting for the train at Ayutthaya. Chang beer model's own.

Our sleeper cabin seemed okay on arrival, and we went to the restaurant car for a snack and a few beers, and met the real life Borat! He was from a small disputed territory of Georgia and Russia called Abkazia (which actually has quite an interesting history if you like that kind of thing). He showed us a picture of his alarmingly young wife, and offered to introduce us to a Triad arms dealer in Bangkok on our return to Thailand. Suitably intrigued, inebriated and terrified, we returned to our room, sadly to find that cockroaches had settled in. We slept as best we could (Ben, being quite tipsy slept very well...) and woke up to find ourselves by the Mekong river, the border of Thailand and Laos.

Our luxury room. And appropriate Hitchcock film...