I survived most of my trip through Bangkok, Laos and Vietnam on street food, and although many other travellers – as well as friends back home – told me how “brave” they thought I was, I had no problems. Eating alone in restaurants always feels a bit strange to me, but there is no such stigma with regard to street food, so there’s a kind of social comfort factor. The street is also the place where you can fill your stomach for less than a dollar.

When I happened to look at the menus of Thai or Vietnamese restaurants, the selections did not seem all that different from their San Francisco counterparts. It was on the street where I felt like I could find something really new and different.

I also really liked how out-in-the-open these places were. On the streets of Hanoi, people cooked outside, ate outside, washed up outside – familes and vendors alike, on the busy sidewalks.

Even in my Hanoi hotel, when I ordered the traditional Vietnamese breakfast of pho bo (beef noodle soup) or chao ca (fish porridge) each morning, someone from the staff would carry an empty tray out the front door of the hotel and return a few minutes later with my food. Everything else on the menu came from their own kitchen, but for Vietnamese food, they knew they couldn’t beat what I could get on the street.

From spring rolls to sticky rice, it’s a street food paradise!

On my first day in Laos, beside the Mekong, I had an unbelievable papaya salad. There was a whole strip of vendors along the river, and I hardly ate anywhere else the whole time I was in Vientiane. I had fresh orange-pineapple juice, salt-encrusted grilled fish stuffed with lemongrass, rice noodles with sausage, peanuts, tomatoes and herbs.

Laos and Vietnam were both French colonies, and although that legacy is not without its bitterness, one thing the French left behind is the art of baking. French bread from a burlap sack on a Hanoi sidewalk – still warm in the early morning – easily rivaled what I’ve had in France, and the tarts and cakes from a small patisserie in Hoi An were as beautiful as they were delicious.

In frigid Sapa, my breakfast each morning was a fist-sized ball of steaming sweet sticky rice, wrapped in a banana leaf. I’d wash it down with a cup of Vietnamese coffee – strong and sweetened with condensed milk – and each time I’d swear to myself I’d never have coffee any other way for the rest of my life.

I also had the most unbelievably fresh fruits from beginning to end, including some I’d never heard of before. My favourite discovery was a Vietnamese fruit that’s called chiku in Singapore. I can’t remember the Vietnamese name for it, but the taste lies somewhere between a mango and a pear, laced with a very slight touch of cinnamon.

Hoi An is where I ended my street food spree. I ate my dinners in restaurants there, and I made a habit of buying chiku during my days and asking my waiter or waitress to please slice it for my dessert.

They happily complied with my unusual request, and more often than not, they sat down to share it with me.

The other day in our food court at Singapore Airlines, I bought lunch at a stall called Fish Head Noodles. That’s not such a notable thing to people from this part of the world, but in the US, fish heads sort of, well, freak us out.

Tracy was the one who made me aware of the fact that I ordered my lunch from Fish Head Noodles. I was not even aware of it, which makes it all the more notable. The very fact that we are working in a place where Fish Head Noodles is the most popular stall used to give us a good chuckle. Not because it’s weird or wrong, but just because it’s so different from what we’re used to seeing every day.

In the Suntec City mall food court, there is a stall called Pig Organ Soup within eyesight range of an Auntie Annie’s Pretzels stand. That nicely encapsulates Singapore I think. It’s Southeast Asia with lots of ex-pats – ex-pat people, ex-pat food, ex-pat brands… Asia for Beginners, I’ve heard it called.

So maybe I’ve reached the point where I can order fish head noodles without thinking twice, but there are some things I still have some trouble with. For now, I think I’ll stay away from pig organ soup.

In Laos, I saw several street vendors selling grilled birds on a stick. I’m talking about three or four little songbird-sized birds, grilled on a stick, satay style. I saw an Aussie gobble one of these down.

I’m a pretty adventurous eater I think, but the songbird satay was a bit too fear factor for me. In Bangkok, late one night, I ate a handful of roasted cockroach-sized beetles that I bought from a street stall. I’m not sure why I find this less freaky than songbird satay, and I can’t satisfyingly explain to an orthodox vegetarian why any one meat is better or worse than another. Food literally becomes, well, us, and in that sense maybe our connection to it is too deep and innate to be fully explained.

You end up saying, “it’s just how I feel dammit.”

Anyway, beyond steamed chicken feet and foul-smelling durian fruit, there are a few less obvious things I’ve had trouble eating in Southeast Asia. The first one that comes to mind is cooked iceberg lettuce, which is almost always in porridge or congee. It’s all a discovery process, and it’s a whole lot of fun.

The tourism opportunity represented by the rapid changes taking place in Laos is not lost on the people there. My monk and novice friends, for example, both said they imagined becoming tour guides in the future. This explains their eagerness to volunteer – they saw it as a training opportunity. I was lucky enough to be one of their beta testers.

As a side note, the monks I met in Laos seemed to treat their monastic choice as a friendlier and more enlightened version of the way many less privileged Americans view our armed services (specifically, the associated college fund). In other words, it is a way to gain access to travel and educational opportunities that would otherwise be unattainable. Phra Khanthong told me about several former monks who had disrobed and gone on to establish careers and families, and he predicted he would do the same within five years. It also bears mentioning that I saw very few elderly monks in either Laos or Thailand.

Anyway, back to my original topic… I hope the developing Laos tourist industry can find the balance needed to serve both the pleasure seekers and the adventure seekers.

ON the beaten path…
There were many many tourists in Vientiane. My first impression was that there were more tourists than local residents, and I heard from a number of travellers that this was even more striking in Luang Prabang. This is a bit of a paradox, because many people had made their way to Laos specifically because it is billed as an undiscovered destination. The Lonely Planet book on Laos, for example – admittedly now several years old – is part of the publisher’s off the beaten path series. The paradox part has to do with the fact that although Laos no longer seems to be off the beaten path, it still has no real tourist infrastructure. In that way, it serves neither type of tourist.

The rather funny dynamic this set up is that many tourists in Vientiane and Vang Viang seemed to be attempting to create for themselves the illusion that they were truly off the beaten path. They went about this mainly by trying – sometimes going to great lengths – to avoid any eye contact with other tourists. I admit that I was disappointed at first to see so many tourists, but I accepted this reality pretty quickly, and as a result I got to meet a lot of very interesting people.

The children of Laos…
They are truly beautiful – always quick to smile and wave. There is nothing in their faces that speaks of my relative prosperity (compared to their poverty). There is nothing in their eyes that suggests my presence in their country mostly means potential income. I should say that I found most of the people I encountered in Laos to be extremely warm and friendly, but as in Bali, their warmth was disingenuous just often enough to make me just a bit cynical when dealing with grownups.

Having and having not…
In general, my visits to Bali and Laos are a good reminder of how little we really need to survive, and often it’s the financially poorer communities that seem to be the richest in heart. Perhaps I digress here, but the people of Laos typically bathe twice a day – once in the morning and once in the evening. Outside of Vientiane, they bathe in rivers and streams – in full view of each other, although not in the nude. It’s a beautiful and intimate piece of real life that I was lucky enough to see. Through this daily act the people of Laos share something we think of as naturally private, while we westerners are putting wider and wider boundaries around ourselves.

charity…
Finally, it seemed a little strange to me that the ex-pats in Laos who are working for NGOs like UNICEF live in huge mansions and drive brand new SUVs.

Yesterday, I met a young novice (monk-in-training) while taking pictures by the river. Phong Sawaph is his name, and the first words out of his mouth to me were “please to walk with me.” I was a bit taken aback, but it was so out-of-the-blue, I had to allow the moment to have its way.

We ended up walking for several kilometers along the river and through various back alleys of Vientiane, and he showed me his school and his temple. He also introduced me to his English teacher, a monk named Phra Khanthon.

I visited with them for a while, and the monk asked me if I would allow him to be my volunteer tour guide to Vang Viang – a village about 100km north of Vientiane and known for its beautiful landscape and numerous caves. Basically, he was asking my permission(!) to provide me with expert (and free) tour service to a scenic Laotian village, as well as a day of interesting company. It was the kind of too-good-to-be-true offer you’d never accept from anyone but a buddhist monk.
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I stopped into my favourite Internet cafe to check email, and I was hugely relieved to see Crystal and Jimmy are OK!!! in my inbox. Crystal is the colleague I hadn’t heard about or from (per my last post), and apparently she and her husband were right in the line of fire. They spent four hours clinging to a tree yesterday before making it to safety. They’re now at the US embassy, trying to figure out how to get out of Thailand. Anyway, a big whew!

Crystal claims to hate hugs, but she’ll have to endure a few when she returns to Singapore.

Many travellers here in Vientiane are desperate to hear from friends or relatives who were in the affected areas, and although I’m overjoyed that my friends are safe, I am very sad for those who were not so lucky. Right now the estimated death toll stands at more than six times the number killed in the September 11th attacks. A natural disaster is a much different thing, of course, but I make the comparison because I have so many friends in New York City. When events like these throw themselves into our lives, it makes us realise how interconnected we are as human beings.

Finally, thank you my friends and family for you concern about my own well-being. Fortunately for me, the most harrowing and life-threatening experience I’ve had on my trip so far was largely self-inflicted: I rented a motorbike today to expand my exploratory range.

My parents will be thrilled to learn it came without a helmet, a clutch or working turn signals, and road rules here are loose to say the least. To make a left turn onto a side street, for example, the general strategy seems to be to cruise in the oncoming lane for a dozen or so meters, then cut diagonally accross the oncoming lane of the side road – swerving between the cars paused there if necessary.

Anyway, It’s the end of the day. I survived, and I’ve returned the motorbike to the shop it came from. Rest assured, I’ll stick to foot travel and public transit for the rest of my time in Vientiane. I won’t make any promises about Vietnam.

The bottom line is, celebrate and cherish life. Make your moments meaningful and you won’t have to keep your eyes peeled for tsunamis and renegade tuk tuks.

I have to revise my earlier prediction about updating this blog. As it turns out, not only are there Internet cafes everywhere, but I’m actually motivated to take the time to post.

For about a dollar, I had an amazing dinner beside the Mekong River this evening. It was a kind of warm noodle salad with all kinds of vegetables, chilis, fruits and some slices of the local style pork sausage all mixed together. My beverage was a blended smoothie of fresh pineapple and orange juices. My ambiance was a dry and comfortable 77 degree (25C) evening temperature and the sun setting over the Mekong River.

My company varied. A Cambodian consultant to the local power company saw my beverage and ordered the same. I invited him to sit, and we chatted for a while – mostly about the history of the region, and in particular about Thailand’s and Vietnam’s various encroachments on Cambodia.

He left, and a Japanese woman strolled up a few minutes later. She was wearing a Razorfish t-shirt, so I took the opportunity to practice my Japanese. I told her that I worked for Razorfish, and I asked her whether she worked in our affiliated Tokyo office. Apparently, Razorfish has branched out into a kind of minor fashion label in Japan.

Anyway, the stereotype says that the Japanese travel in large camera-toting groups, but I’ve seen numerous solo Japanese tourists on this trip. Come to think of it, solo touring has been a common plot component in many of the Japanese novels I’ve read. So much for stereotypes.

Bangkok was fun but hardly relaxing. It’s a shopping and partying destination mostly, and I’d like this trip to be about winding down, not winding up. The next time I visit, I’d like to go with a friend.

If Bangkok is New York City, then Vientiane is Tucson. The capital of Laos, nicknamed the jewel of the Mekong, Vientiane stretches along a lazy bend in the Mekong River, and its small size and slow pace are a welcome relief at the moment.

I only arrived early this morning (it’s just noon now). I booked my first night at the Hotel Day Inn, and I’ve just taken my first stroll around town. I stopped into several other guest houses and hotels to check availability, room features and prices. The Day Inn sits on a quiet side street, a few blocks from the river. At US$25 a night, my corner room is large, sunny and clean, with high ceilings, large windows a nice balcony. The staff is super friendly, and the free breakfast looks like it will be good. A few other places I checked out are cheaper (US$15-20) and/or closer to the river, but I like the vibe of the Day Inn, and I think I’m content to stay there.

The transliteration of the Lao language into western characters was done by the French, and so there’s an extra layer of decoding I need to do as an English speaker if I want to attempt Lao. In French, the letter J and the combination Ch are pronounced very softly (zzh and sh), and there is no equivalent to the English “W” sound, so Vientiane, for example, is actually pronounced “Wien-Chan”.

Proper Lao pronunciation, however, doesn’t seem like something I’ll have to worry about. Eeveryone I’ve run into so far speaks very good English, and there are tourists everywhere, so I’m not anticipating much of a language barrier. The cars here are left-hand drive (like Europe and the US), and the predominant vehicle is the pickup truck, so I’m not anticipating much of a culture shock either.

All in all, Vientiane seems much more familiar – and easier – than Bangkok was, which is surprising, and somewhat bittersweet. The only challenge will be money. The local currency is the kip, but the Thai baht and the US dollar are equally, if not more, popular. When I bought a little laundry detergent in a local shop, the price was marked in kip and I paid in baht – all the while trying to calculate the value in US dollars. Now my brain hurts.

Well, I’m off to Thailand, Laos and Vietnam until 9 January. I had been planning to buy a motorcycle in Hanoi for my trip down the coast (apparently you can get a reliable Russian-made bike for less than US$500), but Tuesday’s Straits Times cover story was all about fatal motorcycle accidents, which has made me think twice. It seems that every time I get close to becoming a rider, I see a motorcycle accident, or read about one.

Anyway, motorcyclist or not, I’m off now. I’m not anticipating being able to update this blog very often while I’m away, but don’t be a stranger anyway.

Happy holidays my many friends. I love you all.

As a postscript, I registered my trip with the US State Department, and I received the following messages…
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