The Long Road to Laos, Part Two
When I arrived in Central Asia, I arrived under cover of darkness. I awoke the next morning to a whole new world. When I left Central Asia, I was in the Chinese part, and it seemed a watered down version. Leaving China, I passed into Chinese Southeast Asia under cover of darkness and awoke to a new world. I presume it to be as watered down as Chinese Central Asia, but going in the other direction it is a delightful aperatif.
The key, as I’ve said in the past, to Chinese cities is the little differences. In Jinghong, the massive palm trees lining the streets is a good start. But the two things that distinguish Jinghong from other Chinese cities I’ve visited are the local Dai culture and the food.
Yunnan is filled with minority groups. The Dai (not to be confused with the Bai, from Dali) are the most prevelant in Xishuanbanna, the prefecture of which Jinghong is capital. I rented a bicycle and headed south to get a taste of Dai life.
In just a few minutes, I hit the edge of town and the first wave of traditional Dai houses. These are built on pillars so that the family lives above ground, while on ground level the livestock, vehicles and firewood are kept. The roofs are massive and cover the house so that it looks like one big roof on stilts. I never thought I’d find a cool suburb, but I liked the Dai one south of Jinghong. I then passed through farms growing all sorts of crops. I came upon a river and was taken across in a wooden longboat. I took the coin from under my tongue and paid the ferryman.
I cruised through more fields on the other side and popped into a Dai village. There was a golden stupa near the entrance, a reminder that the Dai are indeed Southeast Asian, not Chinese. The village roads were wide concrete sidewalks lined with palms, and every house was the same wooden square on pillars. The women wear colourful clothing and everyone seemed very relaxed about life, a refreshing change in China.
The grips on my handlebars were especially nasty and painful blisters on my left hand forced my early retreat back to Jinghong. Before I returned the bike, though, I went to the bridge over the Mekong, a river I’d come to know quite well over the next few weeks. I took the opportunity to explore the town.
Mostly, I focused my efforts on the culinary scene. Dai food is everywhere and utilizes the full range of local ingredients. A popular street snack is rice that is stuffed into a bamboo stalk and baked over hot coals. Barbeque is popular here, but like the ubiquitosu skewers of Chinese night markets, it is not a light snack they serve. Large portions of meat are grilled over charcoal fires between two sticks of bamboo that act as tongs. One of the more interesting variants consists of patties made from ground pork, shredded bamboo shoots and lots of chile.
Other Dai dishes include fish with lemongrass. This is not nearly as greasy as Chinese food, and the lemongrass is used in conjunction with garlic, green onion, ginger, cilantro and chile. Dai food emphasizes freshness and allows the ingredients to each stand out, as opposed to Chinese food where the ingredients are intended to blend together to form a unified flavour. The Dai way of thinking is more in tune with my own, so I took to their food immediately. Another specialty is fried river fern, a change from the usual spinach and bok choy I’d been eating for the past couple of months. Other Dai specialties, which sadly eluded me as Dai food was lacking from the next day’s town of Mengla (near the border), include black rice baked in a pineapple, and green papaya salad with peanuts.
The Myanmar Jade Market
I went to the Myanmar Jade Market. It is a well-kept secret, even to the Chinese, that China has precious little jade. There are jade-bearing streams in the southern Taklamakan Desert, near the market town of Hotan in remotest Xinjiang, but that’s about it. The overwhelming majority of “Chinese jade” is either a) fake or b) Burmese. The former is apparently quite prevalent in Hong Kong and in tourist towns, but the latter is what you get in Jinghong, a major jade-trading centre.
I came across a fun game in the market. It is played on a square wooden board. There are holes in each corner, as on a billiard table. There are 19 small chips and one large chip, which acts as the cue ball. Two to four people can play, and whoever puts the most chips in the holes wins the round. I really like that game, though I was taken to school by my Burmese opponents, one of whom was about three years old.
At the other end of the market was a Burmese restaurant. I poked my head in the door to see if they had any Burmese beer but they started giving me free samples of food so I stuck around even they they were beerless.
Myanmar is mainly a southeast Asian country, but its western edges are subcontinental. The patrons and proprietors of this restaurant were from the latter part of the country, near Bangladesh. This makes them Muslims, hence the no beer. They did, however, have shrimp pakoras, coconut jelly and chick pea curry. The latter has a southeast Asian twist in that lime juice is squirted on top before eating.
I thought back to my previous curry, at the Pakistani restaurant in Kashgar, and how friendly the people there were. The Burmese were just as friendly. I will definitely need to cut a wide swath across the subcontinent at some point. Heck, I’d go after Thailand if I thought I could afford it.
Laos at Last
There is a palpable sense of excitement, and a proud sense of achievement, when you arrive in a new country, especially when you arrive overland. Your senses sharpen and evaluate every aspect of your surroundings with new vigour. You take nothing for granted anymore. Even the air feels different, although in this case that was the morning fog burning off in the course of the 3km tuk-tuk ride through no-man’s land to the Lao border post. A laid back passport check, some travel tips from the guards and I was in Laos.
My first order of business was breakfast. Noodle soup, yes, but distinctly different on this side of the border. Chile paste and soy sauce share the table here with fish paste, oyster sauce, lime juice, and fresh herbs. It’s a self-customizing soup and I did it hot and sour with mint.
Then I needed to take a minibus to Muay Xai, the important transit point in northern Laos. All the seats were taken so I rode “semi-shotgun”, in the cargo space between the driver and navigator. Thought it’s a bit dangerous, it was fine, in no small part due to the lack of oncoming traffic.
The way to Luang Prabang (my ultimate destination) is around 8 hours of tropical forest, hills, and Lao villages. Lao live on raised houses. These are a fair bit smaller than the roomy Dai houses. Lao keep oxen, chickens and pigs, with only the occasional cow. Women generally wear sarongs but the men stick to worn-out shorts and t-shirts. Whereas the Dai houses were wooden, the Lao houses can also be made from belts of straw and the roofs are sometimes thatched, rather than made of wooden shingles.
The land is not farmed as extensively here as in China. Even across the border in Xishuanbanna, where mainstream China fades away into SE Asia, there is more farming. But then, Laos has a lot fewer people. Boten, at the border, is on most maps for example. But it’s a village of barely 1000 people. In Laos, that gets you on maps, kind of like how Churchill is on most maps of Canada.
Being after dark when I arrived in Luang Prabang, I didn’t quibble and ended up in the white part of town. Nothing in China, not even Yangshuo, could touch this area for whiteness. The only Laotian people are the ones serving you your dinner. I planned to find a more Laotian neighbourhood the next day in which to stay.
I did manage to eat Laotian, though. I had fried Mekong seaweed. The Dai in Jinghong apparently eat this also well, though I never saw it on any menu there. It looks like crisp nori coated with sesame seeds, chiles and garlic slices. Tastes as it looks. I also had bamboo shoots stuffed with savoury pork. The drink was of course Beer Lao. I pretty good as mainstream lager goes, so I won’t be suffering as much as I did in China.
Tags: China, Laos, Travel, Yunnan
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