James finds love...he doesn't want

I was starving by the time that Olay & Jouktouk showed up on their motorbikes. I hadn't gone out for food, as we had agreed to go to the market for breakfast. After a short ride to the market, we walked through endless stalls of merchandise before we found the food market on the 3rd floor. We bought 60,000 kip worth of tickets, and set out to find breakfast. Olay ordered veggie fried rice for me & a fruit shake. The fried rice was absolutely the best fried rice that I've had on my trip - it had a flavor besides oil! James had started to become infatuated by meat on a stick, so he ordered skewer after skewer of shrimp & pork.

We had intentions of visiting Si Saket, Vientiane's most famous temple that was built in 1818. When we arrived, we found that it was closed for some sort of national holiday. We went to his friend's restaurant for a while and sat in the shade. About an hour later, his friends showed up with their vehicles & we piled in the back, in search of a special place for lunch. The girls rode with Phoeui, and the guys rode with some guy (whose name I don't remember). We drove for at least 30 minutes north of town, only to find that the restaurant didn't have any available bungalows. The food is served outside, and each party has it's own bamboo hut. The huts are separated by fish ponds, so you get a really great sense of seclusion. The servers walk from hut to hut, taking orders for food & drinks. When we were leaving, I was really disappointed that they didn't have anything available.

Someone in our party knew of a similar restaurant. After driving for 15 minutes along deserted dirt tracks, we arrived at a deserted restaurant! There were cattle grazing in between the bungalows - this place hadn't been open for sometime. Getting more disappointed with each stop, we finally found another similar restaurant, although it was a bit rundown. I was appalled by the amount of food that we ordered. It seemed like there was 3 times as much food as all of these people could eat. And like the rest of Asia, the Lao folks are much shorter & thinner than your average American. Lunch included the following: 3 grilled fish, 2 pots of chicken soup, countless bowls of rice, several plates of herbs (basil, mint, cilantro, etc), spices (garlic, onion, lemongrass, peppers, ginger), and lettuces. We also had two gigantic plate of papaya salad and an armful of giant Beer Lao bottles. The papaya salad is the most spicy thing that I've ever eaten in my life. The name sounds tame and rather sweet, but the spice of the dish dissolved the inner lining of my mouth & esophagus. I ate about 2 tablespoons of papaya salad, and my mouth was on fire for over 30 minutes!

Needless to say (but I will anyway since the former phrase is cliche), we had a lunch that lasted 2.5 hours. During lunch, Olay's friend was now openly hitting on James - telling him that he loved James. He was taking it well, and I was laughing my ass off. I was teasing James about leaving him in Laos with his new friend, although I'm glad that I created the boundary between myself & his friends when we were at the disco the previous night. I didn't know if the tab for the meal would fall onto James & I (like the previous evening's disco), so I made sure that each of us had several hundred thousand kip. In the end, we split the bill of 340,000 kip evenly among the entire group.

After lunch, Olay needed to head back to town as he couldn't avoid work any longer (he had called in sick earlier in the day). They dropped us off at the guesthouse & we bid them farewell. James & I needed to figure out where we were staying in Luang Prabang, so we hit up an Internet cafe, got some fruit shakes, and hung out before dinner. At dinner, I went to an Indian restaurant, as I was craving Indian food. I ordered samosas, banana lassi, naan, and baigan bharta. I thoroughly gorged myself to the point where I felt uncomfortable walking back to the guesthouse. Although I felt like I was pregnant, I was satisfied after having a delicious meal.