What am I eating? 

On our own again, we have trained north towards China and landed in the Hill Tribe territory of Luang Namtha. 

So vastly different from where we were this morning it is incompressible. 

Hooking up straight from the station into a shared taxi we arrived at our Hotel Zuela, conveniently located right opposite the night market and oh what a treat! 

The locals whipping up a feast for someone’s dinner

 

Open only from 4pm to 8pm it is a plethora of unknown edible delights and delicacies all lovingly prepared by the women of the town and nearby villages. Take home bags or eat on the spot. Either ok 

Super fresh veggies ready for soup. Choose your meat and veggies to include or just tip in one of these pre prepared plates. 

Eggs?

Hmmmmm? 

Lao sausage, especially the back one is great. 

A frog skewer or a bundle of the dried ex-croakers. 

Or if you prefer, live ones

Or a frog lollipop 

Or perhaps a toad instead. 

Fresh live Catfish at the morning market

Fab fruit and veggies, some recognisable, some not. 

Plums, guavas, nashi pears and mangoes served with chilli salt of chilli sugar. Yum! 

Perhaps spinach

Banana flowers

Mushrooms of all shapes and varieties. 

Live crickets

Chicken feet

Fresh portioned river fish 

Rattan used in so many different ways. 

Here the rattan pulp from the centre of the above stems is made into a tasty fish cooked up with onions, lemongrass, coriander and garlic. My dinner with the mandatory sticky rice. The yellow bugs you can see also live inside the rattan stems and can be eaten. A very handy plant as the stems are stripped to make rattan chairs and stools, the fronds used for roof thatching, and the older harder timber used for building. With that, some fish, bananas and coconuts you need little more in the tropics

Even using google translate we couldn’t decipher what most of the treats were, except to know if they were vegetable or OTHER! 

The locals were cruising the aisles, gathering their take away bags of offal and veggies, noodles, sticky rice, fresh bamboo shoots etc. 

I thought these were mushrooms but discovered it was actually offal. Stomach I think. 

Snails. 🐌 

With Andrew unwell with a tummy bug it was up to me to sample as many unknown things as possible, which I did, for a grand total of $5. 

Only one thing was unpalatable, some patè like substance, was ditched, the rest, fabulous. 

Let’s finish up the night with something easy. A crispy banana pancake.