Khàwp Ja̖i Lãi Lãi, Tamarind!

Khàwp jai lãi lãi means thank you very much in Laos (sounds to me like hop jie la lie – but then again, I got some laughs so that might not be right!).

Tamarind is a delicious brown lumpy thing that tastes waayyy better then it looks. Also, the name of my new favorite restaurant in Laos. (Sorry, JOMA!)

Our guest house was only a block down the road from the restaurant so on our first night in town we strolled in to have dinner, and were turned away because they were full. (Must be good!) We made a reservation, and noticed a posting saying the next vacancies for the cooking class was the night class two nights away. So we signed up for the cooking class right then, too. We ate the next night, and then the class was the night after.

We began our quality time with Tamarind at dinner with a set Laos specialty menu. Lao people love them some sticky rice. They eat it with everything. The most common utensil they use is their hands, which was a nice break for my on-again, off-again chopstick skills.

The set menu started off with several kinds of jeow, which are dipping sauces for the sticky rice. There were also some sausages, water buffalo jerky and other relishes, along with these river seaweed-stuff chips that I was really digging.

Next was vegetable and bamboo soup. It was alright. I didn’t really like texture of water-logged bamboo.

We had herbal fish steamed in a banana leaf.

it's like a present! — it’s like a present!

Stir fried young pumpkin with kaffir lime and ginger and lemongrass stuffed with chicken. It looked crazy complicated. It came with this great peanut sauce that I couldn’t get enough of!

pumpkin, chicken and a goodie bag of fish!

Purple sticky rice in coconut milk with tamarind sauce and some Lao “cat poop” (terrible nickname) candy – palm sugar and rice flour I think – for dessert!

The next afternoon, we showed up at the restaurant for class. We had a glass of super-bomb lemongrass/lime aid (a lime lemongrass twist!), then hopped into a songthaew to be transported to the cooking school. It was about ten minutes’ ride to the school grounds, where the employees also live. It was besides a bubbling stream, next to a pond filled with water lilies. There were cooking stations set up under an awning in the fresh air, with a nice breeze and the sounds of the stream filling the air. There was also a garden where they grow their own fresh herbs, and stations set up with traditional flower-pot grills (hey, I just call em like I see em).

It turned out that we learned to cook the exact menu from the previous night, including the standard sticky rice and my favorite, the sweet purple sticky rice. I could eat that every day, so no complaints here!

We also got to chose which jeow we made – I went with an eggplant based one and Ma went with the tomato one. There are different eggplants here than in America, and I like these much better. We grilled the vegetables before mortar-and-pestling them, so it was nice and smokey. We also gift wrapped those fish in banana leaves and steamed ’em.

The lemongrass stuffed with chicken was much easier than it looked. Mom’s gluten intolerance was the only food allergy, although one lady couldn’t (or wouldn’t) eat pork, and one simply refused to eat any chicken (two of my favorite things!). They simply switched ingredients around for the ladies, and even let me stuff my lemongrass with pork since we had chicken the night before.

After all the cooking, we feasted! Besides Mom and me, there was an Australian lady planning on making the lemongrass chicken for her family’s Christmas dinner, a girl traveling solo from Singapore and a couple of older Dutch women who rolled their own cigarettes and smoked with reckless abandon (as you do). The water lillies opened up while we were eating, which I had never seen actually happen before. Magical.

I’ve really enjoyed both the cooking classes we’ve taken, but they were both two different experiences. It was nice to have other people to chat with this time, and our instructor, Chai, and I are big pals now. At dinner, we all talked about our travels and future plans, and in fact ended up on the same airplane later to Hanoi with the Australian lady and her husband.

i made these! (that’s a sticky rice basket on the right – keeps it from drying out)

We totally went back to Tamarind for lunch the next day to try something different – don’t judge! We had pork wrapped in lemongrass skewers, my favorite jeow – jeow bong, which is a sweet and spicy chili paste. Mom had a pumpkin & coconut milk soup, served with a giant rice cracker. We also got some little candies for dessert, and some cold dessert soup – coconut milk with jellies and tapioca in it.

Before Laos, I had decided that I didn’t particularly care for the taste of lemongrass, but after the past few days I have come to like it. Maybe it’s the combinations I’ve tried here that I hadn’t had previously. I was also really into that lime lemongrass twist!

Ock Pop Tok Is A Fun Thing to Say

Ock Pop Top means east meets west, which is actually a good title for this entire trip I think. It is also the name of a social enterprise that seeks to empower women through their traditional skills, as well as promote Laos textile design.

We made our way to one of their store fronts in Luang Prabang, and after a bit of nosing around we took advantage of the free tuk tuk ride offered to those who wish to visit the Living Crafts Centre.

Besides the two storefronts in town, there is a restaurant, weaving and dyeing classes, a few villas available for rental all out in a shaded area on the bank of Mekong River. There are artisans and weavers working away on sight, a free guided tour and a gift shop.

We took a look at the silk worms and their cocoons, the dyeing process and the artisanal weavers doing their thing. The weavers come from villages to learn new weaving techniques and practice. The male role in all this is to help build looms, but an interesting thing is that they also weave bamboo and women don’t. In fact, the tour guide told me if a man can’t weave bamboo, he’s not even worth a second glance!

looks....complicated — looks….complicated

There was also a family taking a class on dyeing, which was kind of a funny activity for two boys (the teenage girl and mom looked right at home, though!).

It was so interesting to see ladies using the loom – I still don’t get how that works! Especially ikat, where they dye the pattern on the silk before they weave it. That doesn’t even make sense to me.

It was a nice quiet break from tourists and traffic for a while. It’s definitely worth a visit if you’re in the area you aren’t familiar with the silk weaving process.

ikat thread on a spool - looks a mess! — ikat thread on a spool – looks a mess!

Since then, we have been to a couple of silk farms and other similar places, but this one was my favorite – maybe because it was really my first time seeing everything in action.

Laos Pals

After breakfast this morning, we hopped on bicycles and went for a cruise in Luang Prabang. We ended up at the library, where kids and teens can show up to practice English with tourist volunteers every afternoon. We were just kind of checking it out before lunch where a young guy struck up a conversation with us on the front steps to practice his English. Then the volunteer coordinator walked by and asked if we’d like to go have lunch.

being meta (we’re explaining what a candid photograph is)

We all hopped into the back of a songthaew and were driven to a random noodle shop. We got out an sat down with a guy already eating, a young artist turned librarian, and a young Malaysian woman who had been volunteering at the library the past few days. Without ordering, we were served bowls of noodle soup – many small shops only have one menu option. We ate and chatted, then paid and got back in the songthaew for a return trip to the library (and our bikes!).

We got back and decided to hang out and help out for a while. Our friend from before was practicing French (!), so we were sat in front of this 18 year old boy. We thought it’d be the same easy kind of chatting as before, but it was a little different – the kid had only been learning English for the past three months. We tried to chat, but mostly he asked us to write down words and he looked them up. Still, he was fun and tried hard. Then I was asked to chat with a fourteen year old boy who had just shown up. His dad was a soldier, and he wants to be a policeman. He asked me about words like barracks, military and, randomly, dowry. Methinks he has his eye on someone!

We were about to leave when two more teenage boys sat down. We chatted with the them for a few minutes more, and they were so funny – just being boys. We showed them a video of me eating a scorpion, and they were suitably impressed slash grossed out. There were several other little groups like ours, many with young monks. There was also a group of 4-6 year olds having a quick lesson. Besides the little kids, there weren’t too many girls practicing their English. This place also sponsored a book boat, sort of like a floating library. It’s hard to get rural children and schools books, so donations go to buying books.

We had some time to kill the next day, so we went back. This time, I talked to a soft spoken boy who was staying in school for the summer to study and practice English, even though all his friends had gone home for the break. Mom chatted with a group of girls and a young monk, who was incredibly smart. I was glad to see some young women there! Out of the corner of my eye, I could see a couple of monks facebooking – which made me chuckle.

he couldn't lean into the girls' pic (no touching!), so he got his own picture — he couldn’t lean into the girls’ pic (no touching!), so he got his own picture

As we were leaving, the volunteer coordinator asked me if I know the word polyglot. Being the arrogant English-degree-holder I am, I assured him that was not an English word. He didn’t buy it, but he moved on to the word molting, which I pronounced for him but then told him I was pretty sure it was exclusively used for feathers. Then Mom showed up and told us yes, polyglot was a word, but she wasn’t sure what it meant. We googled it, and told the guy we would use multi-lingual to describe somebody instead. Then he asked Mom to say and spell both words several times while he recorded her. Later, we found out that Australians use the word molting quite a bit, and a Dutch woman assured us that polyglot is taught to those for whom English is a second language. I guess there aren’t too many polyglots in America.

It was fun, interesting to chat with these boys, and great to meet some people who were so passionate about teaching and reading. Many of the kids are from rural towns who have come to Luang Prabang for school. The volunteer coordinator told us that most are hoping for jobs with American companies in Laos or the tourism industry.

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