Bangkok Glutton

I spent three weeks in Laos and I loved it as much as I could without having the luxury of sleeping on my pillow back at home. But there was one thing that really bothered me about my stay, and it bothered me more than even the trickle of cold water that was my shower on my first night in Si Phan Don. It was the lack of Laotian food.

It wasn’t really a problem in Luang Prabang, Laos’ most visited city, where street vendors and Laotian restaurants (and even Luang Prabang restaurants) form a sort of Fibonacchi sequence in the historic district among all the tour operators, guesthouses, temples and coffee shops that repeat themselves every block or so. Even in the “new town” across the Nam Khan River, you’ll find streets full of barbecued goat restaurants (I’m told this is the “boozy fun night out” meal of choice) alongside the de rigueur pétancle courts, open-air markets with ready-made food, and countless noodle vendors. As I’m typing this, I realize that Luang Prabang is a veritable paradise of Laotian food in a way that nowhere else I’ve seen is.

Because when I landed in Pakse, the so-called “gateway to Southern Laos”, I hadn’t yet found a Laotian restaurant where I could have dinner. Oh, there were plenty of “Laotian restaurants” listed on Google Maps, serving long-cherished Laotian favorites like pad Thai, green curry and pad gaprao. I don’t blame the Laotian restaurants for this; Laotians, like most people on Earth, need to make money to live, and it’s difficult explaining to the casual tourist why they can’t have pad Thai even though they are in Southeast Asia. Hell, Thais can’t even explain to tourists that eating rice and curry with chopsticks is crazy. And can you imagine the annoyance among Vietnamese people when Thai restaurants served deep-fried spring rolls as a “local appetizer”? None of us are immune from this.

I finally did find a restaurant — a French steakhouse, no less — with a real “Laotian” section on their menu promising stir-fried Mekong river fish eggs, local fish laap, and a crispy Laotian rice salad called “nam khao”. Everything came with mountains of green vegetables, the way it’s supposed to be eaten, and it made me overlook the stringy, tough meat of the medium-rare beefsteak.

But what really stuck with me of all the dishes we saw was the “nam khao”: imagine the crispy bits of the paella pan, with aa gentler, sweeter version of a Thai yum dressing, sour fermented pork “naem” sausage, and lots of extra texture with roasted peanuts, deep-fried shallots, and fresh herbs. It’s a dish that I’d seen on the street in Bangkok countless times called “naem sot” (fresh fermented pork sausage) or “yum naem” (a dish I’d thought was Isan, but of course it would be Laotian). I figured it would be something I could find throughout Southern Laos. Or so I thought.

Because when we left Pakse for the Bolaven Plateau, we were having a hard enough time finding any good food, much less Laotian food (we ended up eating a Thai lunch cooked by a former personal chef of notorious village headman Kamnan Poh (!) and deep-fried veggies bought at a Katu village community market for dinner). And Si Phan Don, aka “4000 Islands”? The situation was even more dire: pad Thai and dreadlocked young white people everywhere like it was Khao Sarn Road, and a selection of som tum, fried rice and cheeseburgers on our hotel menu. I began eating Western food, because, to me, eating a mediocre pizza is better than having a not-great massaman curry, but the nam khao was in the back of my mind the entire time.

So on our way back to Thailand, we stopped at the tiny island of Don Daeng for lunch at La Folie Lodge, where I’d read they offered nam khao on their menu (and yes, they also had a nice burger). I wanted my friend Andrew to try it, marketing it as the next Burmese tea leaf salad. Is it for real? I don’t know, but I never tried to make Burmese tea leaf salad at home. However, I have made nam khao, adapted from this recipe, and have decided to write it down for you in case you agree with me that this salad is awesome.

Nam Khao

Serves 2-4

• 1 cup old, cooked rice
• 1 tsp ginger, grated
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 shallot (or half of a large red onion), chopped
• 2 lime leaves, julienned
• 1 Tbsp red curry paste
• 1 Tbsp fish sauce
• 1 tsp pepper
• 1 tsp palm or coconut sugar (brown will do in a pinch)
• 1 egg
• 1/2 Tbsp corn or potato starch

Combine all of these ingredients, form into balls (they will be gloopy), and stick in the refrigerator to firm up. Meanwhile, make the dressing by combining:

• 2 Tbsps fish sauce
• Juice from 1 lime
• 1 Tbsp palm, coconut or brown sugar
• 1 garlic clove, minced
• a small handful of chopped coriander stems and leaves
• 1 bird’s eye chili, sliced
• 1/3 cup boiling water

In a large bowl, combine these ingredients:

• a 2-inch slice of naem (fermented pork sausage), cubed
• 1/4 cup of roasted peanuts
• 1 shallot (or 1/4 of a large red onion), sliced and deep-fried
• 1 shallot (or 1/4 of a large red onion), sliced
• 2 green onions, sliced
• Handful of mint leaves, chopped
• Handful of chopped coriander stems and leaves
• 3 bird’s eye chilies, sliced

In about 2 inches of canola oil (or other oil if you prefer), deep-fry your rice balls in batches until brown and crispy, making sure to not crowd the pan. Place the fried balls on a plate or wire basket lined with paper towels to soak up the oil. Once you’re done with all of the rice balls, add them to your big bowl with the naem and break up the balls roughly with a fork and spoon while tossing. Before serving, add the dressing and give another toss, and if you have them, garnish with a few leaves of chopped sawtooth coriander and a couple of dried chilies.

Eat with fresh lettuce leaves (or whatever other greens you’d like) and you’re all set!

When I was a kid living in Pennsyltucky, I used to daydream about a place with soaring green mountains, rice paddies, and snaking rivers that I could move to someday, far away from teachers who gave lectures about how not speaking English in the United States was “rude”. It turns out, the place I was dreaming about was Luang Prabang.

Lo and behold, I actually have family in Luang Prabang. They are second cousins (or maybe third?), relatives of my Grandma Jeanette’s whom we finally got to meet for the first time last year in November. So when I got a commission to research and write about Luang Prabang for a guidebook this year, I jumped at the chance to contact them again, if only to stuff my face with more of their food.

My relatives own a restaurant, and an ice cream parlor. Could I get any luckier? Madame Noy is owned by the eldest of three sisters, who has been cooking for her family all her life. Her restaurant is known for serving Thai-style chicken rice, crispy pork on rice, and red BBQ pork on rice (it would appear, even in places as proudly Laotian as Luang Prabang, that Thai-style dishes are better known than pure Laotian ones.) That said, her expertise isn’t limited to Thai street food; she makes a mean spread of Laotian food — and not just Laotian, but dishes that are hard to find anywhere outside of Luang Prabang.

One dish that I’ve had a hard time finding anywhere else is “khao poon nam jaew”. While “khao poon” is roughly equivalent to Thailand’s “kanom jeen” (Mon-style fermented rice noodles), “nam jaew” seems confusing because everyone associates “jaew” with “spicy chili dip”.

But this nam jaew has less to do with spicy red chilies, and a lot more to do with pork: pork offal, primarily. It’s what highfalutin chefs today would call “poverty cuisine” — all the off-cuts of the pig that no one else would want — but which is quite sensibly about making sure that nothing goes to waste. To maybe hide the fact that there are so many pig parts in there, a veritable mountain of toppings are included, like chopped banana blossom, cabbage, bean sprouts, the requisite green onion and fresh coriander leaves, green beans, basil leaves, fresh lime, raw chilies, and French watercress, ubiquitous in Luang Prabang. You pile your noodles with the toppings, ladle the stew on top, and give them a good mix while flinging the whole thing with lashings of chili powder. The final flourish involves smooshing rice crackers in your hands and tipping them over the noodles like croutons. The result is milder than expected, natural and somehow refreshing, like most Laotian food is.

Like Thais, Laotians are also fond of buying their favorite dishes from valued street vendors for special meals with family. This includes the only Luang Prabang dish that Thais are familiar with, “tum Luang Prabang“, made with slivers of cucumber (not necessarily big flat noodle-like slices, but often) and seasoned with shrimp paste, water olive and lots and lots of fermented field crab juice. My cousins’ favorite vendor is in the alleyway next to the former Dara Market (it’s since been closed to make way for something, likely another high-end hotel).

Another snack that’s everywhere in Luang Prabang is “khaiphaen”, which is Mekong river weed that’s been seasoned with sesame seeds and dried in the sun. You’ll see racks of it drying along the river banks in November, when the water is as its clearest, I’m told; the rainy season muddies the water too much for collection (not to mention, it’s fairly dangerous). The river weed is supposed to melt in your mouth like a communion wafer; if it’s sticky or chewy, it’s too old — meaning I’ve been chewing on old river weed all my life. The khaiphaen I’m served is a melt-in-the-mouth revelation, but when I ask where it’s from, I get hemming and hawing about how they are friends who process the river weed themselves. Needless to say, it’s not from the Morning Market.

Finally, Madame Noy served us a dish I’ve never seen before, looking like two big logs of black, sticky matter. No, reader, it was not photogenic, as you can imagine. Or don’t have to imagine:

It was called “oat bon”, though I’ve also seen it referred to as “or bon” or “aw bon” online (though that’s not what it sounds like when people refer to it.) Oat bon is not a dish you’ll find on many menus, and if it is there, it’s probably listed in Laotian. It’s made of taro or “elephant ear” leaves, which grow in profusion around the banks of the Mekong and Nam Khan rivers that surround Luang Prabang’s historical district. The leaves are poisonous when raw, so they are marinated and then steamed, thickened with pounded sticky rice, and mixed with seasonings like chilies, galangal, lemongrass, fermented fish sauce (pla daek), ground pork or water buffalo, and pork skin. The result is a stew, or as I saw it, a chili dip that my cousins said must be eaten by hand with a rolled-up ball of sticky rice. Only then would I become Lao, they said, so I did it, after getting a bit on my white shirt (of course). The taste was salty yet somehow light, better than the sum of its parts, and improved with each mouthful. But upon asking where they got this delicacy, they said the vendor made only a few a day: “They don’t really like to work too hard,” they said, and it was the most Thai thing I’d ever heard.

Online research tells me that I can find this dish at Little Lao Culture Bar, which is something I will check out when I return (yes, return!) to Luang Prabang in October for more research. It turns out, unlike what many people would have you believe about Laos, that Luang Prabang is roiling with things to do, and I have only scratched the surface of “sights & activities” (and “food & drink” too, for that matter). I’ll get my fill of everything else that I’ve missed, and make a return trip to Madame Noy (and U-Like Ice Cream next door for their sticky rice parfait, too).

It was one of those weeks when I was furiously scrambling around town, trying desperately to get something off the ground that will probably never see the light of day. I was going home late at night and leaving early in the morning, with no idea of anything around me except for the appointments I had to keep. So when my daughter told me, after a farewell dinner for the people we had been ferrying around, that someone had brought a doll to the empty lot across the street to our house and set it up directly across from our entrance, I had no idea what had happened.

The next morning, looking out from my daughter’s room to the banana tree-strewn plot of land across from us, the hairs on my arms stood up. It was a doll, probably carved of wood, standing as high as a 6- or 7-year old child. It wore saffron-colored clothing and it had golden designs painted onto its back. It was facing away from us — this is an important detail — and looking like it was striding away from us. But it was there. And it was very unwelcome. Even with its back to us, it was not a good sign.

Ask a Thai person near you about what it means when someone puts a doll in front of your house, and they will tell you that it is bad. If you have no Thai people around to ask, what I’ve gathered is this: it’s called a “ku man thong”, which normally means a baby spirit, summoned by an evil and powerful sorcerer who can make the spirit do his or her bidding. In the past, terrible things had to happen in order for a ku man thong to be created (sort of covered in the hit Thai TV series “Evil Lawyer” on Netflix). Today, you just have to go to the amulets section on Trok Nawa in Bangkok, which, coincidentally, is where we took our guests one afternoon.

There are, last we saw, two stores which sell “black magic” items, one of which devotes its time exclusively to the black arts. It’s a cursed-feeling place, where the items emanate a palpable feeling of hatred and where even people who don’t have an affinity for the stuff (or aren’t totally suggestible like me) get freaked out. The photo above, taken by my friend Nong, is one of the more benign photos she took. There’s one image with a chalk-whitened baby doll with blacked-out eyes that I swear is cursed. I would never pass that on.

I similarly felt it would be a bad idea to take a photo of the doll in front of my house, which — to a Thai person at least — denotes a high level of animosity against you, enough to want to curse you and your house. Again, it was facing away from us, which seemed like a relief. But the back was directly opposite of the door we use to enter and exit the house. It felt personal. It felt like someone really hated us.

I asked around, of course. My housekeeper, who believes in that stuff as much as I do, said that people “not from the neighborhood” left it one night, blindfolded, and then returned a few days later to remove the blindfold. That made the doll seem doubly dangerous. The elderly man down the road said the people who did it arrived in a black van. There was no other information forthcoming: a neighbor? A pissed-off former business partner of my husband’s? The chef at a restaurant I wrote about? There was no way to know.

I told my friend Nong, who kindly sent me a package of cascarilla with which to purify the house, both inside and outside. I made my housekeeper dust the perimeter and I scattered it in every room, leaving powdery white streaks on everything. Nong said I should make offerings at three temples and get a spirit house, where I should obtain a man, woman, and rooster figure for the house. I could then invite monks to bless the house and ask the monks the best place to set the spirit house up.

I had my husband ask the monk he gives alms to every day about what to do with the doll. “Our temple is full of these things,” he said he was told. “We don’t have room.”

I began to worry about the doll. Every day, I asked my husband for ways to get rid of it. I was told it was difficult because the land it was on wasn’t ours. But when I asked about contacting the actual owners of the land, he would resist. “I don’t feel anything from it,” he’d tell me. “It doesn’t bother me at all. If it bothers you, then it’s aimed at you.” That distressed me further, and I began to lose weight — something that only happens when I am very unhappy.

But after only a few days, I had to leave for a research trip in Laos. The doll issue was still unresolved. On my last trip back from town, I’d made the mistake of exiting the taxi from the wrong side, and the taxi had overshot my house. I’d caught a glimpse of the side of the doll’s face: black, with bubble cheeks like a young child smiling. I asked my husband if that was bad. “I don’t know,” I was told.

I flew to Luang Prabang, but on the tarmac on the way to the airport, I remember fantasizing about just giving in. I would walk onto the loamy soil on the other side of the street and face the doll, just like it wanted. I would hug its wooden body and clutch it as I fell backwards onto the ground, the weight of the doll pushing me further into the dirt. Only then could I be reclaimed by the mud, the bugs, the vines, all the things that I had somehow dug myself up from but had never managed to fully escape. I would go back to where I belonged.

A few days later — exactly 7 days after they had placed the doll — a traveling junk truck asked us if we would let them have the doll. We said yes. So they took the doll, using bare hands and everything, into the truck that trawls the Samut Prakan streets in search of trash to sell, and that was the end of that. I have yet to go home, but I think I’ll go see where it once stood, and see if there’s any bit if it remaining there. It doesn’t hurt to be sure.