Day 10 - Phuket & Ko Phra Thong

Unfortunately, our hotel in Phuket is the pits.  They forgot to pick us up at the airport (though luckily a nice lady helped us out), the pools are a strange green color, the shower water sprays every which way but on your body and their breakfast buffet was visited by more flies than people.  The only good thing about our stay is that we're leaving earlier than expected for Ko Phra Thong.  

Beach down the way from our Phuket hotel

Happy New Year's Eve, everyone!  Hopefully I'll be able to update you when we get to the island.  We read they only have four hours of electricity a day, so we'll see :).  If not, please do a little bottle dance for us to bring in 2013 the right way!

Day 9 - Somewhere Over SE Asia

Here's some photos from our day of travel:

Bye, Luang Prabang!

Lots of fog on the way to Vientiane

Arriving in Phuket

 After three flights, one transfer to a different airport and a transfer to our hotel in Phuket, we're finally here.  Well, half way, anyway.  Phuket is just a quick stop on our huge journey to Ko Phra Thong.  Tomorrow is the other half of the leg.

Day 8 - Luang Prabang

 Today was just a hang out day.  Andrew was still trying to beat his bug, so we slept in late while Sylvie and Henry went trekking to a temple on the other side of the Mekong.  We all met back up for lunch, but Andrew hung back to nap, so Sylvie, Henry and I had a repeat lunch at L'Elephant of French food.  It was a nice change of pace :).  And as soon as I heard L'Elephant was in the running for the lunch spot, I immediately threw my vote for it, thinking only of the passion fruit sorbet.  I'm happy to report it was just as good the second time.

On our lunch outing we stopped by a salon so Henry could get his hair trimmed:

Before

After

I took some art shots on our walk back toward the hotel, in between shopping stops:

Interesting set of weathered doors

Hanging lanterns above a street cafe

A monk strolling along the sidewalk

We decided on a little boutique hotel around the corner from us - Satri House - for dinner.  The atmosphere was so charming with little candles, unique tableware and no one within ear shot.  

Table setting at Satri House

Henry finally succeeded in ordering a proper martini

Sylvie and I had the coconut and galangal shrimp soup with sticky rice.  So yummy!

Tomorrow will be a hellish day of travel starting at 5 a.m.  Wish us luck!

Day 7 - Luang Prabang

Cooking class started this morning at 8:30 a.m.  We met a few other folks at the Tum Tum Cheng Restaurant and got our cook books.  The woman who ran the class, Linda, told us a bit about traditional Lao cooking and about the cuisines in Laos and Thailand.  She also explained that galangal, lemongrass and kafir lime leaves were the three absolute staples of Lao cooking.  Aside from that, they use coriander (cilantro), ginger, shallots, basil, long beans, and many types of chiles.  They also have two kinds of rice - sticky and steamed - and there are different varieties of each.  Sticky rice is the common type that Lao people eat at most meals.

Our recipe book

 After the introduction, we met the other folks in our group, a nice couple traveling the world from the UK and an older couple and their daughter from New Zealand.  Linda instructed us all to pick five dishes we wanted to cook out of our books and we chose green papaya salad, lemongrass chicken, fried chicken with red curry paste, tamarind beef stew and chicken larb salad.  From there, one of the other crooking school instructors took us on a tour of the local market for ingredients.  There was quite a bit to see at the market - more foodstuffs, clothing and knickknacks.

Chili sauce

Baguettes

Fermented fish

Market scene

Linda's spread when we got back from the market

Our chopping stations

 When we returned to the cooking school Linda taught us how to make a tomato rose with cucumber leaves:

Her example looked way better.  I didn't take a photo purposely so you couldn't compare :).

We chopped lemongrass, kafir limes leaves and galangal for a few minutes to get the feel for the right way to mince, slice and pound the ingredients.  Then we moved to the kitchen to start cooking.  We each got to help make various dishes:

Sylvie making fried chicken with red curry sauce

Henry making green papaya salad

Me making tamarind beef stew

It was so interesting to see how the ingredients came together to make the rich flavors of the dishes, even though we only cooked each dish for ten minutes or so.  The depth of flavor was impressive.

Finally we sat and enjoyed the fruits of our labor!  The meal was spectacular.  One gentleman put it aptly, "This is the best meal I've had here and it was cooked by a bunch of foreigners!"  

Our meal!

Class ended around 1:30 p.m. and we each received certificates of completion.  We passed!  We were pretty tired, so headed back to the hotel for a short rest before deciding what to do next.  Around 4 we grabbed a tuk tuk to the bank of the Mekong and jumped on a long boat for a river cruise during sunset.  Our boat driver took us up river for about 30 minutes and then we drifted back down as we snapped photos of the gorgeous scenery:

Common long boats along the river bank

Of course, thirsty for a drink, we found a small bar on the river and had a cocktail and watched the moon rise.  The town is so peaceful that it's easy to forget you're surrounded by tourists.

The moon shining off the water 

We had reservations at an Indian restaurant at 7, so we walked over and grabbed our seats.  The food was alright, but not quite as flavorful as we're used to.  I forgot to take pictures again, oops.  

Andrew was still feeling under the weather, so we got in bed early, with our thoughts on what to do on our last day in Luang Prabang.  It feels like our vacation is going by so quickly.  How has it been 7 days already???

Day 6 - Luang Prabang

Our first morning in Luang Prabang was a little overcast and cool - normal around here.  We set off in search of soup for breakfast.  The Lao make a similar soup to Vietnamese pho and we found a little corner shop with exactly what we were looking for.  We all ordered some form of noodle soup with chicken.  I put too much chili paste in my soup and I was sniffling most of the meal.  Henry put a "thimble" in his and said it was perfect.  Show off.  The woman who ran it also made a form of the Vietnamese banh mi sandwich, which was really good.   Before breakfast, we came across this woman selling serious knives and a woman transporting a LOT of eggs on her scooter:

Breakfast spot - lady making banh mi

Soup for breakfast is sooooo good

banh mi-type sandwich

 After breakfast we walked to the entrance of Wat (I can't hope to spell the name of it right, just look at the sign below), which was just a towering staircase.  Great, more stairs!  Just what I was looking for!

Andrew and Sylvie near the top of the temple grounds

Buddhas near the top of the grounds

 Even though we were huffing and puffing, the climb was worth it.  The views were unbelievable.  We could see where the Khan River met the Mekong and the entire city and surrounding mountains.  The silhouettes of the hills in the background just seem to gradually get lighter and lighter until you can't see them any more, but it seems they could go on forever.  This city is truly beautiful.

Panoramic view at the peak of the hill

The climb down the steps wasn't too bad and we came out on the other side of the temple, in front of the national museum.  We decided we had seen enough for the morning and left it to explore another day.  As we walked around the town a bit more, Sylvie and I visited some cute shops and then we all stopped to have a quick coffee pick-me-up.  The place we stopped was near the far end of the city, so we walked over to enjoy the views.  Andrew and I trampled our way through some steep steps and some weeds to get to the banks of the Khan River and took some photos.

This was a grumpy dog in the street

Art shot of some bikes

View from the river bank

 As usual, we were getting hungry and decided on L'Elephant for lunch, a fancy french place.  The food was good, but nothing super special - except for the passion fruit sorbet that Henry and I got for dessert!  It was the only passion fruit sorbet I've ever had, but it was the best!!!

All of our feet were in need of a little rest so we tuk-tuked back to the hotel and enjoyed the pool and a cold beer.  

We had reservations for dinner at a restaurant with traditional Lao food at 7 p.m.  Sylvie and Henry left a bit early to have a drink before dinner.  Andrew and I had some trouble finding our map of the city and the key to the room (both of which turned out to be in Andrew's pockets), so we had time for just one quick drink across the street from the restaurant.  The four of us met up about 7 and sat down for dinner, ordering beer, eggplant dip, tom yum soup, fried fish, fried chicken and a few other things.  The tom yum was ok, not as good as Thailand, and same with the eggplant.  We had heard it was pretty good, but it had nothing on the place in Chiang Mai.  The fried chicken and fish were good, though, but mainly because of the yummy pepper sauce they came with.  I forgot to take photos of the food, but here's the end of the meal:

Andrew was feeling a bit under the weather so we headed back to the hotel to get in bed early.  We have reservations for a cooking class in the morning.  So excited!

Day 5 - Chiang Mai & Luang Prabang

Sorry for the later-than-usual post today.  The wifi at our hotel in Laos leaves a lot to be desired :).  

One thing before I get into today's blog: Henry wants me to set the record straight about his neck wallet.  He tells us he used the neck strap for only the first two days of the trip, then decided it was annoying (and embarrassing for the rest of us) and he ditched the strap and now carries the entire thing in his pocket.  That's one version.  Sylvie and I are a little suspicious of Henry's story.  It seems to us that he was using the neck strap for longer than he claims and his story isn't quite matching up to what we've witnessed.  We're all sticking to our versions, so we will probably never know the true story of the embarrassing neck wallet.

We left Chiang Mai today.  Sad :(.  We packed and ate breakfast this morning and decided to spend our last couple of hours exploring Wat Chedi Luang with a reclining Buddha.  The grounds were beautiful and the oldest temple on the grounds was built of brick.  

Wat Chedi Luang

Reclining Buddha

From there we caught a tuk tuk to Warorot Market which was an expansive maze of vendors both above and under ground selling clothes, wares and foodstuffs.  The market was a lot like the ones we explored in Vietnam:

Dried, um, fish??

Food stall

Pork parts stall

Outside the market we found a great little alley with vendors selling our favorite - radish cake!!!  It isn't exactly cake, it's more like really thick noodles fried up with bean sprouts, seasoning and egg.  SO DELISH!  As we sat down to grub we noticed the vendor next to us selling green papaya salad (a staple in this country), so we had a plate of that as well.  The woman was kind enough to let me photograph her mixing our dish in one of those huge mortar and pestle type bowls again.  Gotta figure out how to get one of those back to the US in my carry-on...  

Radish cake!

Papaya salad in the making

 After a bit of shopping we tuk tuked our way back to the hotel and stuck our feet in the pool before the cab picked us up to go to the airport.  We took a few minutes to look into yummy places to eat in Laos and made a tentative itinerary.  Our flight departed about 3:30 and we arrived around 4:30 p.m.  We love those short flights :)

Luang Prabang-bound!

Villa Maly pool 

 Arriving in Luang Prabang was like arriving in Cambodia - the air was a little smokey and hazy and we had to walk from the plane across the tarmac to the super tiny airport.  We got our visas on arrival and met our driver to take us to the hotel - Villa Maly.  As we were riding along with the hotel driver we heard this strange meowing sound.  It was pretty loud and unmistakably a cat…coming from the front seat on the driver's side.  We all sort of looked around at each other and wondered if driving with a kitten in your lap was a traditional custom here.  Turns out it was just the guy's ring tone on his phone.  It happened two more times after that and still startled us!  When we arrived, we changed and hit the streets to see the city.

Instead of spending time shopping in a night market we found, we sped through in search of a place for a drink and dinner.  Unfortunately, the place we were hoping to eat at was booked for the evening.  The hotel recommended another place, across the bamboo bridge over the river, so we tried our luck.  We didn't have any idea what was in store for us, though:

Long, rickety bamboo bridge to the restaurant for dinner

 Although the bridge was a bit unsettling, the restaurant atmosphere was totally worth it.  Hidden among a bamboo jungle, we were seated at a short table with room for our legs underneath.  We made it just in time for happy hour, so we ordered two rounds of drinks and an appetizer.  The food was pretty good, but we're hoping for more traditional Laotian food tomorrow night (we made a reservation at the place we couldn't get into tonight).

Ticket in the window

 The scariest part of the evening was trying to cross back over the bridge after a few drinks.  The bamboo seemed just a little more unstable than two hours before...

Sorry there aren't as many photos this time.  It takes an eternity to download the photos onto the blog via the hotel's internet.