20th Sep
Today I was up early and had to pack my bag with my newly acquired purchases...so it took a while. I paid for my room and laundry ($30 for 3 nights) and power-walked to Tum Tum Cheng restaurant....arrived there nice and sweaty and slightly flushed. After that it takes a good hour to "cool down". The group for the cooking class was made up of Swiss, Canadians, English, Mexican, New Zealanders and Australians. Not a bad mix. After we were all supplied with tea we were given recipe books to choose 6 dishes...not an easy task it all sounded delicious! There were starters, salads, soups and mains. Eventually we agreed on 6 recipes which were spring rolls, papaya salad, red chili chicken curry, sour fish soup, steamed fish in coconut leaves and ginger fish. Then we hit the markets. This is an experience. If in southeast asia you have to check out the fresh food markets. Although the term "fresh" could be used loosely. There was meat everywhere crawling with flies and being handled in all sorts of ways. There was fish, beetles, snakes and crabs along with vegetables and noodles. After being shown a few of the staple ingredients we made our way back to the restaurant, chatting all the way and exchanging travel stories...which never gets boring (maybe to us travellers but I guess to other people it may not seem too exciting)...."you had to be there" kinda thing.
We had our stations set up and put on our aprons and wielded our massive cleavers...the multi-purpose knife for all asians! Our teacher talked us through the base ingredients such as galangal, chili, morning glory, basil etc etc. We passed around the ingredients, twirling them in our hands to inspect them closely and smelling their pungent aromas. Then the teacher talked us through sticky-rice. This stuff is a little odd. It is a different type of grain of rice which isn't grown flooded like normal rice and is more starchy. It is soaked, usually overnight, for 4-8 hours. They get up early (4am or earlier) to prep the rice by washing it and then steaming it...in time for the alms at sunrise...this is when the monks walk around the town with a pot in hand and people put in balls of sticky-rice or other food. Monks only eat twice daily. The end product is quite dry and you pull it out of a special bamboo container it is kept in and form a ball...this you can then dip into curries or stews. It was pretty cool and very different! We began cooking, starting with the spring rolls then following with the soup and curry. We put the fish and other ingredients into the banana leaves to be steamed and mixed the papaya salad. It was fantastic!!! The smells emanating from that kitchen were incredible and as I hadn't had breakfast and it was already midday, my stomach was tying itself in knots!!
Finally we sat down to our feast...and it really was a feast! Complete with Lao wine we were set. The flavours were divine! The steamed fish was great and the sour fish soup different. I enjoyed rolling up the balls of stick-rice and dipping them into my curry. It was so awesome I was so glad I had taken the class! We couldn't finish all the food...and there was still dessert! The teacher had treated us to banana and coconut stick-rice and it was sooooo yummy. Not too sweet but a nice end to the meal. After coffee we received our "certificate of participation" and our own cook books....will be treasuring this one! We said our goodbyes and I headed off in search of an ATM with Barry as I'd had to borrow money off him to pay for the class! Then I spent a good 2 hours on the internet catching up on stuff and headed to JoMa cafe. It is so peaceful and cool in there. And full of tourists! But everyone was quiet and in their own head-space. I sat in a comfy chair and ordered a very extravagant banana split after all that food I'd eaten!! I just felt like something cold and refreshing! Back at my hotel I jumped at a tuk-tuk driver and asked him to wait while I grabbed my bag. Then he drove me to the bus station. I headed to the counter and it seemed they had double booked my seat. I got worried thinking I wouldn't get on the bus at all! But they just moved me to the back. I still had time to kill so grabbed a coke and waited. Finally I got on the bus, and loaded my own bag onto the bus after taking the lead from other travellers. We left at 7:45pm. It was a reallllly bumpy ride and we were winding through the mountains, taking corners wide and on two wheels I'm sure! I don't know if it was because I was sitting over the back wheels but I seemed to be bumping around in my seat alot more than others. It was quite funny actually and I had to laugh to myself occasionally! I was sitting next to a japanese girl whose head kept on lolling onto my shoulder, which really irked me! It was magic driving through the mountains at night. The lights were all out in the bus and the moon was very bright so it was possible to see quite far into the distance. It's too hard to describe when mountains of that magnitude are doused in moonlight and you are snaking through them, trying to comprehend the beauty of it all! We stopped around 1am and after sussing it out I realized we got a dinner of rice and "stuff" included. So I picked what looked like some sort of curry and later realized it was pork belly. It was pretty gross looking but tasted ok. We hopped back onto the bus and continued on. I awoke to people talking very loudly and the bus was stopped. It was an American lady protesting that she missed her stop, Vang Vieng. The driver and his helpers blamed her, and she in turn blamed them for not notifying her of when we had reached Vang Vieng. It was all very confusing and finally she grabbed her things, notably irrate, and flagged down a car. She and another traveller got in and eventually we headed off in the opposite direction. We arrived in Vientiane to the sun rising. By this point I was getting sick of the bumping around...the novelty had gone completely! We pulled into the bus station and were descended upon by the job-hungry tuk-tuk drivers!!!
