Even a hangover can't dim the enchantment of Luang Prabang. The gauzy tranquility of the place puts a languid drift into your step and a diaphanous cloak of dreamy carelessness descends upon you. The river reflects the gilded curlicues of the temples and the crumbling colonnades of antique French villas. Lush palms line the riverbank and the wooden balustrades of the Lao houses are twined with scarlet bougainvillaea.
For nearly three decades, communism kept Laos and Luang Prabang in a timewarp. The unique Lao-French architecture and ancient temples miraculously survived battles, bombs and bureaucracy but were in a sad state of decay when the bamboo curtain finally clattered down and glasnost came to this little-known one-party state.
I had come to Luang Prabang for the food. If Laos had managed to keep its distinctive identity intact outside the homogeneous blanket of globalization, then surely its cuisine had too.
I was staying at the Vanvisa Guesthouse, a small place owned by Madame Vandara, an entrepreneurial communist who is celebrated for her Lao cookery lessons.
The evening I arrived, Vandara was out of town, so I unwisely spent my first night at her guesthouse testing the local liquor, lao lao, a homemade rice spirit of unspecific gravity. I awoke with a monstrous hangover. Dying of thirst, I staggered downstairs in search of water and lurched straight into Vandara, her family and their guests sitting formally at breakfast. They looked at me with horrified expressions. I froze. Then we all burst into laughter.
Vandara and I took an immediate liking to one another. We talked food all morning. Warming to my enthusiasm, she suggested we went to market the next morning and then cook a meal together.
Lao lao lesson learned, I awoke sober the following morning, dressed quickly and walked out into the dawn half light. I dipped into the back streets towards the market and found myself in an elegant residential district of winding lanes, coconut groves and duck ponds. I was right in the middle of town but it felt like a village.
As the darkness lifted, I could see people coming from the hills around with bundles on their heads. A Tannoy started up, with tinny music intermingled with the morning news. The market was soon buzzing; it was huge -- a pungent, steaming, seething mass.
I'd arranged to meet Vandara for a guided tour. I spotted her in the butchery area and negotiated my way through, getting splattered by blood as the butcher-women wielded their cleavers with vigor.
"Now," said Vandara, grabbing a really big pair, "we get the ingredients and I will show you how to make laap."
Laap is the national dish of Laos (essentially it is a salad made from meat or fish which is cured in lime juice and mixed with chopped mint and coriander, lemongrass, chilli, galangal and roasted rice powder). It is made as a celebratory dish rather like our family roast on Sunday.
Back in Vandara's kitchen, we spent the next hour in a whirr of activity -- chopping, pounding, searing, steaming and smelling, while I desperately tried to take recipe notes in between. I learned that the staple is sticky rice, a semi-translucent variety that balls together like bread, followed by wild greens and river fish, wild birds, insects and game. Most of the population live by subsistence farming, so they eat what they find. But wild food, it seemed, was a primary feature of the cuisine even for the wealthy.
Next stop was Done Khone, where my journey was to end. Known as the Tahiti of Laos for its languid charm, it is one of thousands of small islands that rise from the Mekong river at the south-western tip of Laos; it is also famed as home to the extraordinary freshwater dolphins of the Mekong.
It would have been difficult to find a fairer spot than my rosewood veranda, but it was time for dolphin spotting. I had been told to follow the old railway trail to the "dolphin viewing" village, before the heat of the day, so I began my walk.
After an hour I left the jungle behind me and reached Ban Hang Khone, a sleepy, flower-tumbled village, once an important hub of railway activity.
Here, I met Noi, a local guide, hoping for a better chance of spotting a dolphin from his canoe. As we left shore, we both looked doubtfully across the large expanse of caramel-colored water strewn with stony islets. After a while, we moored up by a rocky outcrop and I clambered out. Noi remained in the boat smoking roll-ups. I sat and waited.
Mekong dolphins look similar to Beluga whales; they have a rounded head with no beak and a flexible neck. They have 76 teeth in their famous smile. Sadly, they're among the world's most endangered species. Locally, they are called paa khaa. Laotians neither hunt nor eat the dolphins, believing them to be reincarnated ancestors. One ancient myth tells of a beautiful maiden who was forced into marriage with a hideous python. To avoid her fate, she leaped to her death into the Mekong -- the spirits took pity on her though, and transformed her into a paa khaa.
The villagers say the dolphin population has halved in the past few years. No one knows why. Environmentalists have helped to organize fish conservation zones and a system of cash compensation for fishermen who release dolphins alive if they are netted. Reports suggest, nonetheless, that the dolphins continue to disappear. There might be as few as 10 left in Laos.
"Paa khaa, paa khaa," Noi hissed, flinging his rollie into the water, and pointing to a couple of specks in the distance. There were two, and they were getting closer. Soon they were 15m away and I could make out their fins as they rose from the water. Then they disappeared. Minutes passed. My heart sank. Well, at least I'd seen them.
Then, quite suddenly, 2m from our rock, a dolphin poked its head out of the water and looked me in the eye. I fell back in shock. Noi was so excited he almost lost his balance on the boat. The head disappeared, only to re-emerge a few seconds later with the second one. Now both dolphins were giving us the once over. It was heart-stoppingly wonderful. Then they vanished.
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