Glances over the shoulder of a teacher...: Food - Part 1: The morning market

There needs to be a basic introduction to the food here in Laos...

Food here is fresh... very, very fresh! The basic day for the Lao market goes something like this. At about 4am-6am, the animals are led to the slaughter - every day! They begin cutting up the chickes, cows, pigs, or other large animals and sorting the meat out for distribution. The morning market opens around 6am for the local villagers to come and begin buying the meat and other fresh vegetables wholesale. They take the meat and veggies back to their respective villages (there are over 60 villages that make up Vientiane - its still divided this way, much like the way we divide a town or city into districts) to sell to the locals. There the locals will pick up whatever they are planning to cook for that day and take it home to prepare it.

This happens every day in Vientiane!

The selection at the morning market is quite astounding considering that it was done all that morning and will be gone by that evening. The Mekong River provides a selection of fish, eels, and squid. There is also the usual selection of smaller land animals such as frogs, rats, and even bats. One particularly interesting choice is the coagulated blood... which looks oddly enough like pudding or jello.

We enjoyed some fried bananas. It was kinda like eating a banana filled donut, only the donut was a little thicker and harder than usual.

Enjoy the pictures and videos...

Here we enjoy fried bananas: