Day 11 Luang Probang Laotian cooking classes.

Day 11 Luang Probang Laotian cooking classes 11/05/10

It’s an early start this morning with a stomach that has somehow survived the night without any impromptu trips to the Loo.
Speaking of the toilet, they don’t have the most sophisticated ablution system so once you’ve been number 2’s which often resemble number 3’s, you have to flush your butt with a shower hose then deposit any remaining paper in the nearby bin…god I love traveling!!!
So into town where I meet with my fellow “wantabee” gourmets, we chose several meals from the menu available and board a Tuk Tuk for a trip to the local markets to discover what it’s like to buy the produce first hand.
The market has just about every type of vegetable, animal and mineral menu ingredient that you could imagine including all the things that hop, fly, and croak and all of them crawling with flies. Not your regular Aussie “if you swat me I will leave you in piece flies, but the campaign hardened Mekong fly that is as angry as hell and just won’t take no for an answer”. After wrestling half of our menu from the vendors and the other half from the flies we happily head back to the cooking school in the sound knowledge that if you haven’t experienced the joys of dysentery before then the wait will soon be over…..
We set about immediately learning the finer points of Lao cooking some of which I will hope to demonstrate on my return home. I hope the conventions team is excited about this as I am…ha ha.
The class was actually really good, our teacher was great and we where soon chopping, smashing, mashing and julienning our way towards lunch.
After pulverizing everything in sight including my fingers once or twice it was into the kitchen for the actual cooking, which apart from losing an eyebrow in a very nasty wok incident, everything went well and after our triumphant meal was consumed we were all awarded certificates and band aids in equal amounts…..in retrospect I do think the 50% proof Lao whisky they where insisting we drink may have had a contributing factor to some of the afor mentioned mishaps.