July 6th, 2015
Adventurous palate?
Well, we didn’t get A huge amount accomplished today, but we did decide around 2pm to go on a walk. The one thing I simply had to make sure to do today was pick up our laundry, fortunately I remembered around 6:30😉
We headed out left from our hotel to walk along the Nam Khan River. We perhaps would have headed out earlier, but there was a rain shower that passed through (just to raise the humidity I am sure). When we got up to the top of the peninsula, we encountered a small park like setting. I can’t really call it a “park” although some may. There was a lovely view of where the Nam Khan and the Mekong rivers meet.
I think they have spectacular flowers here is SE Asia. 🌹🌻🌺
So I saw this little contraption. Looks like a roomba for the lawn, do you see the docking station in the background? So what I’m not sure is, if it is to pick up leaves etc, or to keep the grass snipped. It wasn’t moving when we passed it. I really wonder, maybe this would change my perspective on yard work if I had one.
We walked the whole outer ring of the peninsula (not really much of a walk-prolly 20-30 minutes if one was focused-which we were NOT) before we looped back and came across the Royal Palace museum. It was to close at 4pm and it was just shy of 3:45pm so we slipped in and took a couple photos.
Word is, this place is kind of cool, it’s been kept pretty much as the Royal family lived in it before they were ousted in 1975. Including the garage which still has their cars in it. Not sure what the whole story is there and why they didn’t get to take their stuff, maybe a research project for another day.
This is a temple on the grounds….as always, beautiful. Lucky enough to have a Chinese fashion model on the stairs at the time I was taking my picture. Hahahahahahahaha JK
We have been toying with the idea of eating at this buffet style open food market place. It is pretty sketchy looking and certainly isn’t the most hygenic place to eat. Most travel sites advise it’s best to dine before 8pm. But it seems adventurous and we are all about the adventure. So for 15,000 kip (less than $2) we can take a bowl and fill it with whatever we see in front of us. Minus the meat I think, that is extra.
Some stuff we recognize, some we don’t, so of course we only take the stuff we recognize. Like noodles…there is something that looks like Mac and cheese (it wasn’t) and some stuff that looked like potato (it was) everything else fell on the spectrum between. It was not the worst thing we have eaten (I’ll get to that) but it wasn’t worth much more. We decided one bowl and we would share. So if we need to toss and start over somewhere else we are not too heavily financially committed.
Of course there are no forks, so this slows ME down tremendously, as I’m not known for being adept at using chopsticks. Troy was fine of course, he is proficient with this tool. Regardless, we should know in a few hours if this was an OK decision. It’s now been 2 hours since we ate, and I still feel fine, so I’m hopeful. There were 3 Italians that came along just as were were finishing putting our bowl together and believe it or not they talked the lady down to 10,000 kip each for their bowls. I was flabbergasted. Seriously gobsmacked that they would try to pay this lady $1.25 instead of $1.75. That and they piled their bowls right as high as they could, and poured mounds of her sweet chili sauce over all of it. I get that some bapackers need to travel on a budget, but that seemed a little extreme to me. The poor lady needs to at least break even….
On the way out of the back alley that hosts this spectacle every night there are several places that have “various forms of meat”. Everything from bbq chicken and pork (recognizable) to what look like sparrows with the necks broken and skewered on the bbq. I’m sure there are frogs and all kinds of delicacies….I have read about the buffalo sausage that they make here and sell on this street. I’m thinking to try some, so we stop and ask what some things are, and we find ourselves buying some bbq pork 10,000 kip ($1.25) and one buffalo sausage 5,000 kip (60 cents). Once again, not a huge outlay of cash if we don’t like it. The BBQ was really really tasty, we ate that first…
The buffalo sausage was the consistency of mushy, greasy baby poo inside a chewy casing….my first expression is optimistic, then a split second later, my expression says it all.
I had two bites, which is exactly 1.5 more than I should have, Troy tried one, then we put it back in the bag and tossed it. In hindsight we should have given it to one of the stray dogs that we see roaming everywhere here.
Feeling like we need to bring it down a notch, we stop at the bakery and get our requisite personal cakes that we have grown so fond of (nightly). Tonight I go for the pineapple and Troy has his personal favourite (banana). Still need to try the chocolate, but I’ve enjoyed mango a couple times, and coconut. Recommend all of these highly! We did not dig into these right away, as we like to have them for a night treat when back in the room.
We did however stop by the minimart with the regularly priced ice cream that I came across a couple days ago. Here is my proof…
And a shameless selfie enjoying said ice cream….
After we bought this ice cream we saw another minimart and their cornets were 12,000 kip. So YA, that’s all I’m going to say about that. I’m done whining about the overpriced ice cream, other than we came across the lady we bought the original stuff from today and you should have seen her face when we walked up. Really just walking by, but I think she thought we were walking UP to her. She jumped up and smiled and thought we were back for more. Um…..
So the view down the street really jumped out at me tonight. The flags….not used to seeing so many hammer and sickle flags, the communist symbol. They are prevalent here right alongside the Laos flag.
Found some tasty mystery snacks down the alley from the place we ate “supper”–hoping they are tasty, if not, I’ll just go back to purchasing my trusty banana chips. Who are we kidding, I’ll get more banal chips either way 😉
Some small amount discussion as to what these actually are, I’ll keep you posted when I get into them.
Oh YA, and here is a little toddler playing on the floor while his parents tend the store.
Yes, he is playing a stacking game with butane lighters. I guess it true, a young creative mind can make a toy out of anything. I suppose the fact that there was a small newborn sibling screaming it’s head off made it easier for the parents to just be grateful he was playing quietly and they weren’t gonna question it as long as he was quiet? Yikes.
As I sit here on my patio blogging. I see lightning off in the distance, wonder if this means rain? Overnight rain would be best as we are really hoping to rent bikes tomorrow so we can head off into the countryside. Not to get up close and personal with snakes or anything mom, I’d like to see them catch me 😉😉
