South East Asia on a Hamstring – February 18

Luang Prabang, Laos – February 18, 2000

I had my final banana pancake lesson this morning. For weeks, I’ve been lulled into purchasing banana pancakes for breakfast. Every guesthouse in Southeast Asia features them and so far every banana pancake I’ve had has been disgusting. Some are deep-fried but most are raw. All are unsatisfying.

I ordered the banana pancake at a small restaurant. A boy took our order and delivered it to his parents in the back. He then put on his shoes and marched down the dirt road towards school, joining the small parade of neatly dressed students, all sporting daypacks or the local variation on bicycle messenger bags.

The pancakes were gooey, raw, doughy things. I ate the banana out of them and left the dough. I had to go into the kitchen and point to a lot of eggs to get the cooks to produce the right meal for one of our number.

We paid locals to carry our bags back to our boat. I carried pintos myself, loaded up with fried rice noodles and vegetables for the day’s lunch. Next to us was a second boat, the public ferry packed with tourists, all glaring at us for having half their number in the same size boat.

We cruised down the river for several hours until we got to Pak Ou Caves. The caves were crammed with Buddhas. It’s not clear why, or where the Buddhas came from, but does make for a nice break from the Mekong. We also visited another village – this one was derived from a different hilltribe and so all of the houses were up on stilts. Again, we delivered our gifts of salt and fruit and the locals seemed quite happy to get them. Back on the boat, our pinto lunch was fried rice noodles with vegetables.

We arrived at our final destination, the French colonial town of Luang Prabang, in the late afternoon. We checked into Pa Phai Guesthouse, a 150 year old bamboo-thatch two-story home. By now I was getting single rooms every night, as the other two solo women travelers were thick as thieves and I was the traditional loner. But the walls were so thin that we could hear everything in the other rooms – Wendy and I could have a conversation through our walls by speaking in normal tones – and the shared bathrooms were in the halls, so it wasn’t as “solo” as it appeared.

The bathrooms in developing nations have a distinct, vaguely vomit-inducing odor that never lets you forget where you are. The toilets in Pa Phai were western style, but as in many countries, you can’t put paper down the toilet. There is a small trashbin that you toss used toilet paper into. It acquires a distinct unpleasant odor throughout the day, as you can imagine.

Luang Prabang turned out to be a fantastic little town. It’s an UNESCO World Heritage protected site, due to its unique 18th century French architecture. It’s almost a sleepy, undercommercialized, small New Orleans. It’s got its share of tourists – enough to make bottled water readily available and the restaurants upscale – but the commercialism is not over the top as it was in Thailand. The Laotian people are friendly and still new enough to tourism to be sincere and not jaded. The stores sell beautiful textiles, handwoven locally, and antique opium pipes and weights. “BeerLao” t-shirts are a popular purchase with tourists.

After a short look at the town, we all headed down the streets of Luang Prabang to Phousi Restaurant for a Laotian feast.

Wendy ordered local dishes for us all to share. We had Lao Salad, a mixture of watercress and greens, tomatoes, cucumbers, and a special Lao dressing. We had papaya salad (eww), sticky rice, steamed rice, vegetables in coconut curry, fried weed, pork on lemongrass, chicken koy, special au lam, spring rolls, and pineapple juice. With sticky rice, you ball it up in between your fingers and dip it in the various dishes around your table. It’s quite sweet and delicious.

All of the food, except for the fried weed and papaya salad (acquired tastes), was amazingly delicious. Afterwards, we all went to Cafe des Artes, an upscale tourist joint, for caramel flan and genuinely tasty banana pancakes. I even had chocolate drizzled on mine and was happy to have finally had a decent banana pancake, even though it wasn’t breakfast time.

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