253. | Hit the Road Steve

After the Hells Angels (“Five days, 500 km on the roads of Laos”) left Sasa Lao, I couldn’t say that I was left alone. I asked for the same room back that I had used before the motorbike ride. And there was also a Belgian guy I met on a slow boat, so I wasn’t left without accommodation or company.

I told you about my first days there in my article “Hello Banana”. What I wrote there covered roughly Monday and Tuesday.

On Tuesday, our two-person team was joined by a lady, and that’s how the Sasa Lao Singer Club was formed – if we had had a name, that might have been it.

Local Food

After the second sunset cruise that sailed on Tuesday, the three of us rushed back to the hotel for an interesting program.

At the Sasa Lao hotel, they served us a 7-course menu of local dishes for dinner. With the following names and order:

• Chao Mal: ​​a lightly fermented, rice-based local dish that has a fresh and sour taste.
• Khaipen: crispy fried river seaweed, often eaten as a snack.
• Nem Juen: fresh, unfried spring rolls filled with vegetables and meat or tofu.
• Nem Deep: crispy fried spring rolls with a rich, spicy filling.
• Mok Pa: fish dish steamed in banana leaves, flavored with herbs.
• Qua Si Khay: fried egg dish, often mixed with vegetables or meat.
• Pak Luam Mit: a light, steamed or fried side dish made of mixed vegetables.
• Unplanned: fruit selection

The river seaweed was brought from the Mekong, so I think my friendship with the river really deepened now. Because this dish was something fabulous.

The dressing served with the two spring rolls was great on its own, but after squeezing the lime in, I gave it the adjectives great and fabulous.

The fish dish was also very interesting. I love fish and have eaten it in many forms and places. Here it was like a clam. And the taste was very slightly fishy. It reminded me of fish from another world.

We were not prepared for the fruit selection. Although the amount shown in the pictures may not seem like much, I can honestly say that the fruit barely fit in my stomach.

It would have been a shame to miss this selection of dishes. In recent months, I have become very used to eating local food, I have learned a lot, but this dish was really very special in its local simplicity.

After dinner, we went bowling. Where I bowled first. My first bowling is usually successful, but from then on it doesn’t usually go so well. This time it was different because my first bowling was a strike, and then the power went out. We waited an hour for it to come back, and then we got our money back.

We ended the day at a disco, because even that was the end of the day.

Chomsi Luang Prabang (Phousi Hill)

On Wednesday after work I went to the coffee shop where I had received a coffee ticket from the previous day’s blood donation.

I ordered a coffee and sat down with my laptop on the banks of the Mekong River, where I became a digital nomad blogger for a while in the pleasant afternoon heat. I really enjoyed the freedom, which was made memorable by the pleasant breeze blowing from the river, the beautiful view and the smell of coffee.

Lately I have often thought about the expression that for me writing is the breathing of my thoughts, so I sat at the small table with wobbly legs and did a breathing exercise for an hour and a half. And for some reason I felt like I was sitting in Paris, like Jenő Rejtő did back then.

The coffee ran out, and the hill towering above the city was still waiting for me.

I visited the church built there with the aim of staying there until dark, so that I could see both sides of the city from above.

The special thing about the temple area is that it is located on different levels, you have to climb a lot of stairs to get to the top and it’s a bit like a labyrinth.

The top of the hill had a beautiful view of the city. Both in daylight and after dark. Since I had time to wait for the sunset, I meditated on the top of the mountain. It was long enough to catch the sunset – which I wouldn’t have seen anyway because of the smog – with my eyes closed. So this meditation was a bit like time travel.

The group went to a party that day too, but I skipped today.

The Last Dinner

My last day in Luang Prabang started out similarly to the previous one. After work, I went to the same café to drink coffee that I would leave some money for.

The experience was different from yesterday in that I now wedged the table leg so that it wouldn’t wobble, and I didn’t imagine myself in Paris. Oh, and maybe the trees greeted me as familiar faces today. The waitresses certainly did.

From there, I moved on to another café to gain more writing experience.

Three members of the Sasa Lao Singer Club met in this café.

So the three of us discovered the next place, the cocktail bar of a Hungarian lady from Siófok. This was the first time I had spoken Hungarian virtually in months. Not much of course, because we were also considerate of the others, so the two Hungarians meeting far from their homeland mostly spoke English.

Regardless, it was still a great experience. The lady is a delightful person and we learned a lot from her about the country and her own history.

The cocktail bar has been in operation in Luang Prabang for 17 years. Before we went there, I checked out their website and the video with the lady. Both are worth watching.

My favorite cocktail is the Bloody Mary, as I mentioned in my blog post “Cinque Terre travel diary”. The Bloody Mary is made with tomato juice, vodka, lemon juice, Worcestershire sauce, hot sauce, salt, pepper and often celery stalks or other garnishes. There was also a secret ingredient in the drink here, and instead of celery stalks, it had cucumber.

The cocktail I drank in Bergamo was listed as the most delicious cocktail of my life on this blog, but the one I drank in Luang Prabang even beats it. So much so that I asked for it for the second round.

Finally, for the third round, the owner lady brought a very delicious second version as a surprise, which I don’t know the name of, but I’m sure that the rim of the glass was salty, the liquid inside was sweet and there was black pepper floating on top. And of course, it was also very, very delicious.

From there we didn’t go far, just to the restaurant across the street, where we had a slightly more special dinner than usual. The special thing was the wine. Wine is not one of my favorite drinks, and I’ve only had it once in the last 8 months, and it suited our mood that evening.

Finally, we went to a place called La Cantina.

The days we spent together were marked “will be memorable” in this bar. You have to imagine a place that is a bit organized around music. It’s a restaurant and a bar, but most of the room is occupied by a corner called a stage and armchairs placed around it.

Guitar, microphones, congas, cajón. That’s all. But if you can play one of them, or bring your own instrument, you can already be a member of the band.

And to sing, you just have to grab the microphone.

The guitarist and the rhythm section provided a solid foundation. With familiar songs, or unfamiliar songs, but in a familiar musical world.

The main singer that night was a man who came in. With such a voice! Well, hearing such a voice live, seeing it all up close, feeling the raw energy that is born in spontaneous music, voice and movement is an incredibly rare experience.

I constantly felt grateful to be a part of so many beautiful moments. As did the rest of the team.

The guy, with whom we have known each other since the slow boat, played the cajón and sang. And we knew that the lady was a singer, so we were really looking forward to hearing her voice live.

She was pure energy while singing. I felt a little excitement in her at the first notes, but it quickly disappeared. It was exciting to see how professionally he reacted to the musicians’ unexpected moves, and with an open heart I simply had to let the energies, the good feelings, the emotion, the joy swirl around me. They lifted me out of my chair, put me down in another dimension, and other waves brought me back. It was a phenomenal experience.

The duet of the professional male and female voices drove everyone crazy. They worked together so perfectly, as only two people living freely in music can. The audience screamed for more.

There were a few well-known songs during the evening. The unmissable ones, such as Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door, are the always good blues tunes. However, for the three of us, Hit The Road Jack will definitely remain as a memory.

Hit the road Jack and don’t you come back no more, no more, no more, no more.

We stayed for a long time after the closing ceremony, we didn’t want to go home, but in the end we did.

So – naturally enough – we took a nice swim in the Nam Khan River at two in the morning. That set us up for the next morning.

I set off

We agreed to meet at 8am. The tuktuk would arrive at 8:30am to take me to the train station, and the other two members of the team would greet me with a coffee and a hug.

I knew they didn’t usually get up this early, and it was a huge honor that they did it for me. If they hadn’t been there in the morning, I wouldn’t have felt bad, but I was grateful when they came out of their rooms, sleepy but smiling.

Smiling at our shared experiences and channeling my energy towards the morning departure, I told them how great it would be to write the story of our last evening.

I even thought of a title for the post. But it wasn’t that.

Somehow this title came about, and I happily accepted that I wasn’t the one giving the title this time.

Hit the road Steve!