Luang Prabang, Day 2

My morning schedule was quite packed. I’ve been trying to learn how to “wing it” on trips, but it was just so difficult not to write anything down in my Notes app. Here was the original plan: wake up at 5 to check out the alms giving ceremony. Hike the Phu Soi Dao for the sunrise. Check out the morning market. Have coffee in one of the cafes. Go back to my hotel to take a nap. Lunch. Explore the temples. Cooking class.

Mother Nature apparently disagreed with me.

I had been hearing rumbles as soon as I woke up, but I was stubborn so I decided to go out anyway. I braved the drizzles but it quickly turned into a downpour as I made my way to Sisavangvong Road where the alms giving ceremony was supposed to be. It was dead quiet and I didn’t see any sign of the ceremony. Maybe because it was raining, duh.

I forgot my umbrella and if I went back to my hotel now I’d be totally soaked, so I decided to just hang around and sit in one of the patios of the closed restaurants. This is also one of those moments where I wished I had other people with me right now, because as much as I love solo traveling, it kind of sucked to face this kind of disruption alone.

But I guess the plus point is at some point, you get used to it. You learn how to give yourself pep talks, because you know no one else would do it for you. As I watched the three dogs across me playing around, I told myself: it’s fine. The alms giving ceremony seems kind of a bit touristy anyway, it won’t be a huge loss. You can skip the peak since you’re planning to hike in Nong Khiaw anyway. Missing the morning market sucks, but maybe you can check it out tomorrow before your bus leaves for Nong Khiaw.

Once the rain started to dissipate, I decided to continue walking ahead just to see what else was there, and it turns out the alms giving ceremony was there.

So although there was the rain and everything, at the end it kind of worked out, and I was feeling much better. After that I went home to change my clothes and catch up on some sleep, since it seemed the rain was not going to stop anytime soon.

I texted Joy and he said we should skip the morning market tour since the market is open air and it was still raining, which is totally understandable. But the rain stopped at around 10 and so I decided to just go by myself and check it out. Along the way, I passed by the Luang Prabang library, and next to it there was a bookshop slash book-exchange kind of place. I usually try to visit libraries and bookshops every time I travel to a new city, but I didn’t even think about it here simply because I thought it would be difficult to find one in this sleepy town. I was totally wrong. Not only was there a library and a bookshop, but there were many kids in the library, some were playing with each other on the patio, while the others gathered around this large desk inside the library, reading books. I decided to check out the bookshop and lo and behold, there was a cookbook! It’s titled “Traditional Lao Cooking” with sketches inside the book! Freakin’ perfect. Of course I got one for myself.

Maybe this disruption is not so bad. I totally didn’t plan to get rained on, but if I followed through with my exact original plan, I probably wouldn’t have discovered this library and bookshop.

I decided to just forego the hike since it was very cloudy anyway, so I went straight to a cafe called Saffron Cafe. It is said to be the cafe with the best coffee in Luang Prabang, and while I wasn’t sure what exactly I could expect from Lao coffee since I barely heard about it, especially compared to other coffees in the region like Vietnamese coffee, it still piqued my interest. I got myself a glass of iced latte and a tamarind apple pie, both of which were delicious, but that apple pie crust was especially to die for. What I didn’t expect, though, was the view: they had this kind of wooden terrace across the street, which overlooks the Mekong River. I spent around two and a half hours just enjoying my coffee and pie while painting the scenery in front of me.

As I was painting, I noticed there was a young woman who seemed like a tourist a few seats away next to me, all by herself. She had a bowl of noodles and coffee, and I noticed how she was smiling, taking in the surroundings before she had her first spoon of the noodles broth. And that’s when it hit me: despite the rain and despite the fact that I was alone, this is all so fucking great. This beautiful glass of coffee, the flavorful combination of the tamarind and the apple that I could taste in every bite of the pie, the beautiful unpolluted view right in front of me, this fresh air that I inhaled. There are cars and motorcycles in Luang Prabang, but the number seems to be low enough that it’s pretty negligible especially, if you compare them to the amount of trees that are still around. And since it had just finished raining, I could still smell the petrichor around me, which made it all even more special.

I didn’t know it at the time, but that short encounter reenergized me and honestly kept me going. I felt much, much lighter. I know this sounds so fucking cheesy, but I guess in the midst of uncertainties, ruined plans, and, ya know, funny feelings - it’s easy for us to forget about the things that we can be grateful about. This stranger inadvertently taught me how to just literally pause and look around and take it all in. I wish I knew how much impact this encounter would have given me, I would have braved myself to walk up to her and say thanks.

Pause. Look around. Take it all in.

It started raining again when I decided to leave the cafe, but it was okay. I’ve got my umbrella this time, and every time a pang of sadness started to wash over me for whatever reason - sometimes even for no reason - I put what I had just learned into practice: I paused, looked around, and took it all in.

I still had a couple of hours until the cooking class started, so I decided to check out one of the temples in the town, Wat Xiengthong. It is slightly further out but still walkable from the cafe. Honestly, after Bangkok, I got a little bit templed out. Instead of dragging my feet to explore the complex, I just hung outside, sketching the central shrine of the complex that was adorned with the classic cascading roofs. I came up with one of my most favorite sketches to date, except that the perspective looked kind of funky because I totally forgot how to draw with two perspectives.

When I was sketching, there was a little girl who kept watching me drawing from behind the whole time. I tore a paper from my sketchbook, and gave her the paper as well as a drawing pen, but sadly she ran away instead. I would have loved to have her join me and we can sketch together!

By 3 pm, after a short, spring roll stop at The Belle Rive, I was back in the Tamarind restaurant. At first there was just me, but then a woman walked into the restaurant. “Are you doing the cooking class as well?” she asked with a rather strong British accent as she took the seat next to me. She introduced herself - Tania with an i, she emphasized, it’s the Russian spelling - and thank goodness she was chatty otherwise we would have been sitting in silence. We had a short conversation about our travel plans: I told her I would head to Nong Khiaw and be back to Singapore after this. Meanwhile she was planning to go to Siem Reap and Phnom Penh after this, before heading back to Spain to pick up her kids and then back home in Brighton, UK.

Besides the two of us, there were some last minute sign ups, which was great because I think for activities like these the more the merrier. There were a pair of best friends, Maud and Sophie from the Netherlands, and two other guys Harry and Keegan from the UK. After some more small chats, our teacher Sit introduced himself. To my surprise he said he would take us to the market first - the one outside of the city center - because his boss, Joy, told him to. That was so nice, I wasn’t really expecting that! And so we made a brief stop at the market.

From the outside, the market looks like any other Southeast Asian wet market, but there were some interesting things I learned. One ingredient I don’t recall having seen anywhere else is chili wood, also called sakhan. It is actually a species of black pepper, which is not something I would have guessed if Sit didn’t tell me.

There were two variants of garlic and shallots that they usually use: the big ones come from China, while the smaller ones were grown locally. They had their own version of olives too, which name I can’t recall now.

The cooking school was located pretty further out from the city center. I didn’t know why initially, but when I got there, it made so much sense: the school was situated in a large area that I would guess was hard to find in the Luang Prabang city center. They used the area to build some sort of outdoor kitchen surrounded by lush trees, shrubs, and rivers. This setting provided such a great ambience, but not only that, from a practical perspective this is the perfect setting for a cooking class when you’re teaching a group of people, you’re in a region where the heat can be brutal, and you use a lot of fire to do the cooking. Doing all of this in an indoor kitchen would be unbearable.

I shared my table and ingredients with Tania, but each of us had our own utensils - cutting boards, knives, spoons, all that. The way they arranged the tables made us look like we were in Masterchef, battling in groups of two.

The first dish that we were making was jeow som. It’s a multi-purpose dipping sauce, pretty much similar to Indonesians’ sambal. Honestly, I had no idea that dipping sauces are such a great part of Laos’ traditional cuisine, and I was so excited for this part since sambal is pretty much the love of my life. Sit gave us two choices: tomato or aubergine jeow som. I got aubergine jeow som. We first grilled all of our ingredients - chilis, aubergines, garlic, shallots - to make it easier for us when crushing it with a pestle and mortar. And of course I put a lot of MSG into my jeow som too. Tania was horrified. “I’m very concerned about you,” she said jokingly as I poured a lot of MSG into my mortar. I wanted to explain that the whole MSG thing is bullshit, but unfortunately I couldn’t remember the research off the top of my head.

After the jeow som, we created some sticky rice. I’ve made it before in Bangkok, I was kind of familiar with the steps, but this one is kind of different. It’s no surprise that Asians love rice, but what I didn’t know is that in Laos, you usually eat not just with any other white rice, but you eat your dishes with sticky rice. The white sticky rice we eat for lunch, dinner, and the black sticky rice we eat as dessert.

My favorite part was how we made the coconut milk ourselves, straight from the coconut meat, instead of using some pre-packaged coconut milk. I had a lot of fond memories about it, as weird as it sounds: I used to make a lot of coconut milk when I was a kid in my mom’s hometown. My grandma had this coconut grater and I’d just spend hours and hours grating coconut meat although there was no need to.

Our next dish was fish wrapped in banana leaf. Indonesians may be familiar with pepes, both of them are quite similar if not exactly the same. For the fish, we used tilapia. “But we can use any other white fish,” Sit added. For me, the most intricate part was folding and packaging the whole thing with banana leaf. It is an art in itself, one that I don’t think I will ever master.

And last, we made my favorite dish out of them all: chicken stuffed with lemongrass.

“Huh? Did I hear that correctly? Is it chicken stuffed with lemongrass, or lemongrass stuffed with chicken?” I asked Tania when Sit mentioned what we’re making. Apparently it really was chicken stuffed with lemongrass. Sure lemongrass is also a big staple in Lao cuisine, but how do you even stuff chicken into a lemongrass?

“We’re going to operate on the lemongrass,” Sit said and we all laughed in unison. Honestly Sit was just so funny, he’s hands down one of the best teachers I’ve ever come across.

He told us to grab a smaller knife, and demonstrated how he “operated” on the lemongrass with exact precision. He made it all look so easy, but I knew my clumsy motoric skills would be having a hard time. “Do you have any spare lemongrass, because I think I’d need it!” I said.

It actually went pretty well, though. We all ended up with some beautiful lemongrasses that were stuffed with chicken.

After that, we coated them with eggs and fry them. It looks freaking beautiful, but it also tasted amazing. I swear to God, this thing was designed by the angels and came straight from heaven.

I’ve done multiple cooking classes in various parts of the world - Lima, Barcelona, Bangkok, and now Luang Prabang. This one is definitely my favorite. I’ve raved about it in my Tripadvisor review, but to summarize, besides how funny Sit is, I really like how it is very hands-on. They let us do our thing 95% of the time. Because we did almost everything ourselves, it went longer than the cooking classes I’ve done though - we started at 4 pm and I got home at 10 pm - but it was very well worth it.

For dinner, we ate all of the dishes that we cooked by ourselves. As we munched our way through our very own home cooked dishes, we talked about how we all ended up in Laos. I just love hearing people’s different stories, and it’s kind of amazing how we came from different parts of the world and decided to be at this exact part of the world for many different reasons: my reason was as simple as that Laos was the only ASEAN country I haven’t been to besides Malaysia. For Tania, this was her mid-life crisis trip - she had just got out of a divorce and needed to spend some time by herself. She had spent time in Thailand years ago and loved it; in the region, her friends recommended both Laos and Cambodia. For Maud, Laos was one of the countries she was visiting in her round-the-world trip. Sophie was joining for the Laos and Vietnam leg of the trip. Lastly for Harry and Keegan, they were doing a Southeast Asia trip before they started army and law school respectively.

We also talked about what we do. I just told them the truth: I’m a software engineer, but I am hella burned out and I’m trying to dissociate my identity for my job. Tania said it’s the same thing when she just got out of divorce; for twenty years, a large part of her identity was being a married woman, and it can take a while to shift that mindset and realize that you as a human being have so many different facets and you should not be defined by just one thing.

Another thing I learned from our conversation as a group was this: courage. I guess if you’re with a group of people who travel to other parts of the world for fun, it is safe to assume that all of these people have courage as a part of their characteristics. I can’t say the same for myself, though: I may have no problem taking the bus in a foreign small town, but I’m still scared shitless of a lot of things. And one of my favorite things when I’m traveling is just coming across brave, courageous people and learning that if they can do it, I can do it too. Tania mentioned how she made the shift from working at the office to building her own business, because she lost so much of her life commuting that it no longer made sense anymore.

“But how do you even find the courage to do that?” I asked bluntly. I’ve always admired people who do their own thing - build their own business, be their own boss. I’ve often thought of the idea, but I don’t think I have neither the business acumen nor the mental strength to push through.

“You just need to take the first step,” she said. “And then take the second step. And the third step. And before you know it, you’re already doing it. I thought about the same thing when I decided to travel by myself. I had so many worries, but you know? I thought, hey let’s just take the first step.”

Sophie also mentioned how she was moving from her small town to Amsterdam after this. “Are you moving for work?” one of us asked.

She nodded, but she said, “I don’t know what I’m going to do, but I’m sure I’m going to find something.” And that confidence just blew me away. I never thought about moving to a new city or a new country without having a job lined up - that would make me really nervous. But seeing how confident she was, I thought maybe I shouldn’t be worried.

After such a fulfilling dinner and great conversations, ranging from Southeast Asia travel, why Brighton is so cool, what I think about Singapore, the coffeeshops in Amsterdam to the Troubles - we all parted ways. Me, Harry, and Keegan are leaving Luang Prabang tomorrow morning, while Maud, Sophie, and Tania decided to team up to go to Kuang Si waterfall the next day.

“Hope our paths cross again,” Keegan said as we all parted ways.

As I walked home, I thought a lot about the transient connections that we form with the people that we meet on our travels. We all may or may not see each other again and it does not change the fact that we have such priceless memories that we shared.

When people asked me what my favorite part of Luang Prabang was, I found it very difficult to answer the question. A sentence or a picture wouldn’t explain the whole story, otherwise I wouldn’t have been here typing thousands of words. Maybe I’m just a terrible writer, or maybe it’s because what made the trip special for me was not the peak, the mountains, or the river. It was the entire experience: the surroundings, the conversations, the chance encounters, the state I was in.

Or maybe, maybe both things can be true at once.