Street Eats

One of the more exciting bits of traveling is your next meal!  Where and what exciting new food will I try today.  For a budget Backpacker like myself most of these meals take place on the street.  At this point many people may be thinking how "unsafe" this may be.  On the contrary, eating on the street is not only one of the safer places to eat, it is also the more delicious and interesting places to take any meal of the day.  This post will be by country, a bit about the type of food and the way the locals eat the food.

To begin with, Street stalls set up their booths each night.  this means they must pack and unpack their booth each day.  Things get cleaned daily in order to fit into the box they came out of.  On the other side, restaurants do not go through this same process.  Their kitchen could be full of grease or bugs and the customer would never know.  If a street stall is disgusting they have no way hiding it.  This is the primary reason I feel safe eating the majority of my meals on the streets.  (however it really stinks when you get to a town and the stalls do all seem really gross!)

Thailand

The most delicious food in Asia yet.  Most are eaten on the go or set up at a pop up table or make shift restaurant table in a sort of pop up garage that only open at times of the day.  The stand is still all in one room.

Pad Thai- A local favorite made of shrimp paste and rice noodles.  The best is when they make the shrimp paste from scratch.  One famous place in Bangkok does and its amazing.  About $2.50 with Shrimp

Khao Soi- So Good!  Coconut Curry soup with noodles, chicken, crispy fried wontons,and vegetables you can add yourself.  A northern specialty and my favorite.  $1 

All a desserts like coconut sticky rice with mango are amazing as well and worth grazing on

Laos

Less exciting mostly due to the curfew.  Primarily french influence and consisting of baguette sandwiches full of salty egg and ham creations and tasty sweet and savory thin pancakes.

In Luang Prabang vendors set up buffets full of vegetarian fried vegetables, tofu, tomato stir fries, and spring rolls, for $1.50 you can fill a bowl and the owner will reheat you dish a a wok.  I went every night!

Though there are no coffee vendors on the streets in Lao, you can get a fantastic cup of coffee just about everywhere.  In the southern parts of the country they farm organic coffee and tea.  Even if rural villages it is possible to find a fresh cup of organic Lao coffee brewed fresh.  I attribute a good portion of my love of Lao to the fact that each morning I woke up to a fresh cup of amazing coffee that even a Portlander would be excited to drink!

Vietnam

No where in the world is like Northern Vietnam.  The culture is unlike anywhere else in the world and the experience cannot be duplicated anywhere else.  This is not the same for Thailand or Laos.  It makes not only traveling there amazing and unexplainable but also the experience of eating on the street an adventure to describe. Therefore, Vietnam is the most exciting and intricate of street eats in SE Asia so far.  

In Vietnam almost all of the food is taken partially on the street.  Even the beer and coffee over flows onto the street here.  People crowd around on little plastic child stools fit for preschool children.  These are used both for sitting and for your table.   Though there are restaurants everywhere the half restaurants slash street stall garage combo is my favorite place to eat in Vietnam.  Sitting half inside and half out is fun even in the freezing Hanoi winter rain.

Bia Hoi- Local Brew Beer, Made by the vendor and usually tastes like bad fruit- .25 a glass

Pho- Beef or chicken noodle soup, sometimes they put mysterious other things in your soups and I choose not to ask!  It generally tastes very good.  And they do a tomato based broth which is super tasty.

Snails- Dipped in a ginger lemon grass sauce and brought out by the bucket- $3
There a many other soup type dishes in Hanoi.  Many of these cheap eats are accompanied by salad and spring rolls that are meant to be dipped in the broth.  I am unsure of the names but most are pretty bland.  Some include chillies but the tables include far fewer spices than the Pho tables back at home.

My favorite place to sit on a cold Hanoi day is at a coffee stand.  Here locals can squat on stools for hours shooting the shit while the mist and rain passes by.   As it was the New Year and most things were closed and Hanoi was cold and rainy the others travelers and myself did the same thing. The coffee here is either full of sugar and condensed milk or it is made from concentrate.  However, there are plenty of salty snacks like cashew nuts and sunflower seeds.  For hours we would sit and crack seeds and throw them on the ground where they would be swept up later.  In my opinion this was the best way to people watch and get to know fellow travelers in Hanoi.

Street eats have been exciting endeavor while traveling.  Its always exciting to decide where your next meal will come from.  Each region has a different specialty.  Sometimes is daunting to try something new and I really have to push myself to eat that meal!  However, every backpacker would agree it is one of the best parts travel.

Living La Vida Laos

Less rambling and more updating on all the awesome adventures I have had since entering Laos.

I have traveled from Pakse in the South to the very French capital of Vientiane  to the river beach town on Vang Vieng, to the amazing charming and quaint town of Luang Prabang, and finally to a sleepy and amazing village on the Mekong named Nong Khiaw.
The entire time was filled with amazing memories and new friends.  I think I can count the number of meals I spent along on one hand!  Crazy enough I was begging for some alone time.
For those who do not know, Laos is a communist country.  So therefore there is a curfew.  This is pretty weird. The bars and restaurants close around 11:30 and you are potentially locked out of your accommodation for the night if you do not return home.  Early to bed early to rise is the healthiest way of living?

To narrowing down my time I have put together my top two adventures:

1) In Vang Vieng there are tons of wonderful windy and bumpy roads to bike (or motorbike) down.  They lead to waterfalls, villages, are show amazing landscapes of Karst limestone structures.  I rented a mountain bike for the day.  It, of course, broke about 5 km outside of town!  Luckily a Thai man who taught English at a nearby Mong Village fixed it for men and my a girl I had recently met, Alice, was kind enough to wait with me.  However, I could no longer change gears and it unfortunately was set to the highest setting.  Great.... While he fixed it his 10 day old pet monkey kept trying to jump on me! Either way I made it to a Lagoon where I had planed to meet some friends.  Afterward swimming,  I continued biking to a village and saw women weaving silk scarves to sell at the night time craft market.  By the end my arms were pretty soar from all the bumpy rocks.  The ride was spectacularly beautiful and my nose fantastically red!

2) I traveled for a bit with a lovely girl from Belgium named Olivia.  We decided it would be "fun" to take a slow boat up north to Nong Khiaw.  To ad we pictured a lovely large boat with a toilet and snacks and a break for lunch! Needless to say, 8 hours later and after haggling with our sketchy driver to take us to the actual town of Nong Khiaw (it was only the two of us in the boat and some other random Lao people he had picked up), we stumbled into two cozy bungalows with hammocks on the porch.

Coping with a Secret

American pop culture  both glorifies and educates us on the Vietnam War.  Its in favorite movies like Forest Gump, High School class rooms, and in my case in many books on my Dads bed side table.  However, we rarely hear about the reality of the war or pay attention to the horrific facts of the devastation in both SE Asia and in the minds of our own citizens.   Therefore it is not surprising that I was clueless about the effects of the Vietnam War on Laos.  The books call it the "Secret War".

Before Traveling to Laos I became aware of the issue when listening to a This American Life episode that talked about the myth of hidden chemical warfare an threw in a few second splash on this war in Laos. Then, when I purchased my Lonely Planet Book, I read their information on the aftermath of the war.  Since this was so new to me I wanted to share some information on this horrific war that has been shielded from the majority of America just like so many other heinous acts we as a country have committed

The American "Secret War" in Laos
During the Communist era the Geneva Conference declared Laos a neutral nation.  Therefore, the US and Vietnam could not cross the boarder.  However, in response the the Vietcong bringing munitions down the Ho Chi Min Trail, the US broke regulations and dropped cluster bombs all along the Laos boarder.  The problem with this, the majority of these bombs did not explode.  These sub-munitions known as UXO's  remain below the ground today waiting to be set off. Some stats?

• 260 million sub-munitions were dropped over Lao between 1964 and 1973 
• 1,090,228 unexploded sub-munitions destroyed by UXO teams between 1996 and 2009
• 300 new casualties from UXO incidents every year.

Lao is the most heavily bombed country per-capita IN THE WORLD

Unfortunately very little has been done to deal with the issue.  Lao cannot grow or move forward until the UXO's are cleared. Farm land cannot spread, new villages cannot be established, all due to fear that there may be a set a bombs in the area. Clearing teams....

The COPE Center- Cooperative Orthotic and Prosthetic Enterprise
The COPE Center is a co non-profit and government run program that builds prosthetic limbs for civilians injured by UXO's who still have a chance of recovery   The program both builds the limbs, rehabilitates, and educates.  There are a few centers set up around the country.  However, the process is expensive and few have access or knowledge the the Center exists 

Therefore, Laos is unable to continue development.  Farm land cannot be expanded for fear of planting in land mine ridden areas.  The same is true for urban development.  From my traveling the only expansion I have come across is the Chinese railroad that will span the country from north to south.  The Chinese have "loaned" the Lao people the money to build this rail road so that the Chinese can get goods through SE Asia easier... But that's a topic for another day!

Thus ends another travel ramble

Lots of love from a Happy Traveler :oD


Facts gathered from:
The COPE Center in Vientiane, Laos, http://www.copelaos.org/ban_cluster_bombs.php, 2010
Southeast Asia on a Shoestring, Lonely Planet, Lonely Planted Publications LTD, 2012