A word on food.

I haven't said anything about food, mostly (aside from my comments on Nick's yogurt selection). So here are my thoughts up to this point...

I am the homesick type. Especially with food. I do like to try new things, but my stomach is also usually pretty sensitive to long-term adventurousness. I've had french fries only twice in Asia, which, for those of you who know me well, is about a ten-fold reduction of the normal consumption rate. So I've been trying, which was tough in Thailand because my poor Midwestern mouth can only take so many chilies. But Lao cuisine tends to be a little gentler (thanks, France), and I've tried a few more things here. Here's a brief rundown:

Things I've really liked
In Thailand they make a dessert of sticky rice, coconut milk, ripe, ripe mango and little crispy somethings. It's amazing. You can actually get a decent (though imperfect) approximation at Nooshi/Spices in Washington (Nooshi is in Farragut, Spices in Cleveland Park).

I've also developed a greater enthusiasm for curry, which I never had a taste for, but which has always been an amazing treat here.

Local beers -- Singha (pronounced "sing" as Dan explains), Tiger, Chang, and Beer Lao, all turn out to be delicious. Nick and I accidentally purchased two liters of Chang at dinner in the night market in Chiang Mai. (The same meal, I unknowingly purchased a $10 seafood platter; Nick's dinner was about $2.50.)

Fried rice in Thailand is made, at least sometimes, with pineapple. Though skeptical at first, this turned out to be awesome -- and cemented my confidence in Dan's taste in food.

I tried Mekong river weeds our first night in Laos. Nick commented that they didn't have much flavor, but they were salty which of course I liked.

Purchasing a Lao fruit shake entails picking out a cup of fruit -- for me, chunks of both white and fuchsia dragonfruit -- which is then blended with water, ice and coconut milk. I can't tell if it was the flavor or the hot pink color, but it was awesome.

We also had some Lao barbeque tonight. They bring a bucket of hot coals to your table, over which they place a domed grate. The rim of the grate holds broth, so you can make soup; over the grate you grill your beef (or whatever else; buffalo is also popular). It was delicious and the total bill -- for all our food, a liter of beer for me and two mojitos for Nick -- was 73,000 kip. That's about $8.


Things I haven't loved the most
Not that this is new, but Diet Coke is a totally American experience. Coke Zero and Coca Cola Light are making due for now, but man, I will be glad to have a good ole American D.C. back in my hand.

"Street squid" as Nick refers to it, and most squid for that matter. Thai cuisine relies heavily on seafood, as it should, given its coastline. In one of his most adventurous moments, Nick picked out a skewer of squid grilling on a street vendor's cart. With a spicy cilantro sauce, I think he enjoyed it. But I'm off squid for a while -- I'm just feeling a little overexposed. Dried squid, grilled squid, squid pizza, too much for me.

Asian potato chip flavors are intriguing. And those I've tried to experiment with. "Nori seaweed" was OK, just kind of salty. "Pepper steak" was gross (surprising only me, perhaps). "Cheesy cheese" Pringles might be so named in order to indicate that it is not real cheese, or even an approximation thereof.

And though Nick went on an egg-yolk tear for a while (which culminated in our common inability to finish a too-large order of egg-yolk wontons), I've also overdone it on eggs. Scrambled, OK. Anything with noticeable yolks, not OK.



There are always surprises, like my amazing, buttery, delectable croissant this morning; the almond ice cream deliciousness for forty baht on the boat between Koh Tao and Koh Samui; and how weirdly good pizza is here (almost every time we've tried it). It's definitely a fun place to experiment.