Wherever I Want To Be: Vientiane: Market tour, Cooking class, and Herbal Sauna

Vientiane is the capital city of Laos, but it attracts fewer travelers than Luang Prabang. I decided the spend the day doing a cooking course.

I met the teacher, Nook, at Full Moon Cafe. Nook is originally from Luang Prabang, and moved down to Vientiane. Her cooking has become famous due to a Vietnamese chef, Nguyen, who featured her recipes on an Australian cooking show.

We started the tour by visiting a local market. All of the produce is brought fresh in fresh to Vientiane in the early hours of the morning from the farming communities in the north of the country. It looked like a surplus of food to me but Nook said that by the end of the day, it will all sell.

Noodles

Banana flower

Century egg (egg preserved for 1 month or longer)

Galangal (similar to ginger)

Eggplant

Fermenting fish sauce

Frogs

Crab

Preparing coconut milk (milk only comes from old dried coconuts. Coconut water is from the young green ones)

Rat!

Buffalo skin

We then went to a family restaurant which I think is the same as what Chihiro told me, a cheaper restaurant to eat. I had one of the best desserts of my entire trip, a pancake with mango covered with honey. We also had Laos coffee, which is very thick and served with condensed milk on the bottom.

We then went to the tour's owners house, located alpong the Mekong River. We then cooked Lao dishes.

Mok Pa, is fish steamed in a banana leaf. All of the ingredients were fresh, bought from the market that morning. We started by pounding sticky rice into a fine powder in a mortar with a pestle. Lao, and I think in fact Asian cuisine in general, does not use flour. Instead, pounded sticky rice is used as a thickener We chopped up spring onions, chili, kaffir lime leaves and salt, added it to the pounded sticky rice, and then pounded it all together. I sampled a piece of the kaffir lime leaf. I tasted like what I had in Tom Yam! I said to Stevie, (a Singaporean who is a chef in Singapore but a tourist like myself in Vientiane , this tastes like what is used in Tom Yam! And it is! He showed me the lime, which is all dimpled like a stale orange.

Grinding up the sticky rice and other ingredients in a mortar

Kaffir lime

We then steamed 2 banana leaves over heated charcoal to make it soft. We spooned the mixture and fish fillet on top and then folded it up and secured it with toothpicks. Then we placed it in a basket over a pot heated by charcoal to steam.

Steaming the banana leaf

Sticky rice is a staple of Lao food. Nook explained that when you eat sticky rice, you are full for a long time. When you eat steamed rice, you are hungry again after a few hours. And because people in Laos are poor and work in the farms all day, they eat sticky rice in the morning to keep them full. For sticky rice, you soak it in water for 3-4 hours, and then steam it. They don't add butter or salt to it.

Jeo Mak Keug is an eggplant dip for sticky rice. Eggplants in Laos are small and round (though there are also the longer purple ones). We put a skewer through eggplant, garlic, and chili. She told us 1 chili is good, 2 is spicy, 3 makes the foreigner cry. I put 2. After it blackened, we peeled off the skin, and pounded it in a mortar. We added coriander and fish sauce.

Laap Gai was my favorite dish! Its is a chicken salad with banana flower. Banana flower is the part of the banana picked before it fully ripens. The petal of the flower is what is eaten. The chicken and onion were chopped up and fired for us. We chopped up the banana flower, chili, galangal, coriander, spring onions, and mint leaves. Galangal looks like a ginger root, and is in the same family. We pounded it all together. WE added lime juice, powered chicken stock and fish sauce. To eat it, we spooned some on a lettuce leaf wrapped it up. I couldn't believe how good simple fresh ingredients could taste!

After we prepared all these dishes, we brought them to the table set under a tree in the garden. Then we had a lovely meal.

Finally, we made Khao Nigow Mak Moong, mango and sticky rice, for desert. We boiled coconut milk, sugar and a pinch of salt, until it became thick. Then we poured it over a plate of mango and sticky rice.

It was the best food I had in Laos. It was far better than any meal I had in a restaurant.

In the evening, I went to Wat Sok Pa Luang, to experience what I came to Vientiane to experience: an herbal sauna. Basil, rosemary, mint, lemon grass, eucalyptus, and other herbs are boiled below the sauna room. I undressed and wrapped in a sarong. When I entered the sauna, the steam was so thick I couldn't see anything. I eventually could see another female inside. She was completely naked since she took off her sarong. I asked if it was a female only sauna, since I wanted to take mine off too, but she said no, and she thinks a man was sitting on the opposite end. Eventually though I was soaked in sweat and the steam was so thick that I also took off my sarong.

I left after about 10 minutes. I wish I had stayed longer. I was given a cup of herbal tea and just sat and appreciated the calmness of the surroundings, its beauty, and the singing of the birds.