Spiky beef noodle soup!
Trip Start
Mar 10, 2007
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32
153
Trip End
Jan 01, 2007
Viengxai and Sam Neua, Lao Peoples Dem Rep
Saturday, May 19, 2007
Moving guest house i managed to once again land myself in the middle of another bloody Lao party, cue more beer Lao drinking. In the evening i played bowls with a guy who i traveled here with (Dhillon) and i destroyed him! CHAMPION! PUNISHED!( that ones for you Chris).
In the evening three of us tried one of the local places for some food. After ordering different dishes; from what i hasten to add was an English menu, which we pointed at, we all ended up with the same dish, Spiky beef noodle soup! We don't have a clue what the 'meat' in the soup was, but it looked almost green, was very very chewy and had these nodule like prongs on it about 5mm long. Dhillon drank some of the soup and noodles, the girl couldn't bear to touch hers. Naturally i wolfed it down! Would like to know what it was i ate though, i reckon some sort of swamp dwelling creature.
Next day it was back to sam Neua, where i got myself a guest house on the hill near the bus station, with a fantastic view of the town (from my own balcony) and basically killed time. In the evening i met Paul and Fiona whilst dining on my final Laos meal (i treated myself to an actual restaurant based meal, oooh!). They are two travelers i met in Phonsavan and they told me how their stay with Pon had been. Pon is a Lao girl they met in Vientiane who lives in Sam Neua (or outside it in a village) who invited them to her home. They said it was a real eye opener as to just how poor the Lao people really are, as they basically live in 1 wooden hut, and eat plain sticky rice 3 times a day. Now i like sticky rice as much as any falang, i even have one of those containers for it that i use at bus stations etc, but 3 times a day! every day! I think even i would get bored of that. They killed a pig at the village in honour of Paul and Fiona's visit, and tried to get Paul to kill it himself. I was amused enough by this, that's before i even found out both were vegetarians.
So having killed time in these two towns, it was off to Vietnam, where the drama begins! I'll update when i return from Sapa, I've sat here far too long already.
Comments
Please do give more details on the caves - did you do the audio tour? A friend of mine has just been there and said "I have just returned from Viengxay and was transfixed by the experience. Riveting stuff and beautifully written and produced." Did you think the same?