Our last full day in Laos was jam-packed with some lovely experiences.
Jan and I did our usual walk early in the morning and decided to walk along the Mekong to check out Thailand on the other side of the river. There was a lot of mud and a large muddy bank before the River itself so there wasn't a lot to see apart from lots of huge hotels.
Souk came to collect us and we set off for a special House and garden about 20 kms out of Vientiane. It was great to escape the noisy city and enjoy the countryside. Much of the area had been bombed during 'The Secret War' and there was evidence of that when we saw some gateposts made of large bomb cases outside a house.
We arrived at an oasis: lush garden, airy wooden buildings and locally-made decorations swinging in the breeze. This was the Manichan Garden House and Cooking School run by a very enthusiastic older lady - Mrs. Manichan - and some wonderful patient staff. She calls it the Authentic Lao Cuisine Learning Centre and she wants people, both Lao and foreign, to understand the Lao culture and learn some history through use of the equipment that their Lao ancestors used. For the next few hours we created a fabulous authentic Lao lunch with ingredients from her garden and the local market. The menu was great because we had been wondering how to make some of the Lao dishes we had been eating, and this was our chance to get the tips and tricks to making real Lao food.
Dressed in glamourous purple aprons and headscarves we followed instructions. The trickiest decision was the amount of chillies to put in each dish and whether to use green or much hotter red chillies. Remember: less is more! You can always add more but it's hard to decrease the heat if you start with too many chillies.
Here's some recipes as we weren't given a recipe book! I thought I should do this before I forget!
Eggplant sauce:
Put a boiled chilli, grilled small onions and garlic cloves in a large pestle and mortar and grind until they make a paste. Add some cooked fish - and boiled asian eggplants (green egg-sized) and continue to pound. Add a few roasted cherry tomatoes and a dash of fish sauce and salt to taste. Add chopped coriander before serving. It should be the consistency of porridge with some chunks! We had this with almost every Lao meal.
Tomato sauce is basically the same minus the fish and fish sauce
Green bean/snake bean salad:
The teacher said this is a favourite for all women!
Put fresh garlic and chilli in the mortar and pound until paste-like. Add green beans chopped into 2” pieces and pound until broken up. Then add roasted cherry tomatoes and pound. Add some sugar and salt to taste.
Pork and pandan: Wrap small pieces of pork in pandan leaves. Secure in something?! and barbecue until cooked.
I had thought we would make Larb as we seem to have some at every meal:pork, lamb, beef or chicken. (Once I came home and tried to make some I realised it's not as simple as it looks as it contains roasted rice powder which you have to make from scratch for the authentic version!).
After creating the dishes we had the opportunity to eat. We had a few different versions of each dish as a few of us made our own version of each recipe. However they all tasted good to me!! We were impressed with ourselves... and our teachers!
They had some handcrafts from the local village for sale so I bought a few of the brightly woven hanging goodluck charms for the kids.
The next stop was a far cry from the pressure in the kitchen. We arrived at a peaceful green temple compound called Wat Sok Luang. It's called a 'forest temple' not because it's in a forest but because it's a quiet oasis in the middle of the city and ideal for meditation. Well,it wasn't really peaceful as the local school was doing some sort of presentation and there was a guy on a microphone talking loudly!
The idea was for us to do some meditation in an open air patio suurounded by green jungle, led by one of the resident monks. Obviously word had got out so we were given plastic chairs to sit on rather than having to sit on the floor. It would not be a pretty sight watching some of us get down and back up again!!
It was very peaceful, sitting comfortably and listening to the monk quietly chanting. I'm sure a few of us nodded off a bit as it was hot and comfortable. The monk was a friend of Souk as they had been monks together at one time. He was happy to answer our questions and was used to visitors as he ran two meditation sessions each week open to any of the locals interested.
He spoke about the life of a monk and answered all of our questions. I asked him about the positive aspects of being a monk and he said he liked the quiet pace of life and that it allowed him time to really understand himself.
It seems that there has been a change for monks in being less isolated and separate from the community. They are dependent on others providing and looking after them as they have no money, don't cook or clean and live a meditative life, which does involve teaching the novice monks. Many of them come from rural villages to become a monk so they can be educated. Without this opportunity many would never receive an education. We saw a couple of large Buddhist High Schools whilst we were travelling around. In their mid-teens they can go home or choose to continue as a monk. It is an honour for the family if one of their children becomes a monk but it is a hard life!
We then did a brief tour of the major attractions of Vientiane. It seems as if every government building was as imposing as possible with huge columns. They looked as if they could accommodate hundreds of people.
The first stop was the Patuxai monument which was renamed the Victory Arch by the Communists following the creation of the People's Democratic Republic of Laos. It was built in the 60's and the design was based on the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. The upper part and decoration is typical Laos, with a slight touch of the Taj Mahal for good measure!
Next stop was the very gold and shiny 'Great Stupa' or Pha That Luang. It is believed to contain the breatsbone of Buddha although it may be a plastic replica as we have visited stupas elsewhere that are built around plastic replicas! The current stupa was originally built in 1566 with some renovations in the 1930's.It was built by King Setthathirah (that's him in the weird hat) after he made Vientiane the capital of the Xan Luang (One million elephants) Kingdom.
Our last, and very welcome stop was for massages for all seven of us. We entered a lovely old traditional wooden building in the centre of town with lots of female masseurs. After the intial chaos whislt everyone chose the type of massage they needed we were all assigned a masseur and four of us climbed the stairs to a room with lots of mattresses. They were very experienced masseurs and everyone looked thoroughly spaced out as we jumped back in the van.
It had been a memorable and busy day so a cocktail was needed followed by dinner in the Hotel restaurant, as we weren't interested in going far.
your not-really-ready-to go-home-yet correspondent
Dianne
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