3:45am were the first rooster calls and only for a while. Great for me I got a solid 5 hour sleep which is almost unheard of. The roosters stopped pretty quick and just as I was falling asleep again the chopping started from the restaurant below. Chop chop chop, really fast. Everything they cook is chopped (they don't use knives to cut their food on the plate so most things are either precut or of a texture that can be pulled apart by fork and spoon or the fingers) and so the incessant sound is everywhere.
That stops and I fall asleep just before the alarm goes off for my early start to the Alms. I hit snooze, then I hit snooze, then I hit snooze for the third time. Ah, not today, maybe when I come back here I will do it, but not today. I switch the alarm off and crawl under the duvet. It's rather lovely here where it is much cooler than any where else I have been and I am loving that comforting feeling of being able to crawl into the covers and snuggle up, rather than thrashing about trying to get cool or putting up with aircon out of necessity.
I drift in and out of sleep, the street noises, the roosters and the chopping go on and off. I'm getting used to them. Then while in the middle of a dream I hear the roller door and know that the bike mechanic has opened his doors. I say to myself "Thank goodness not quite so noisy today". I make coffee and take it back to bed and just as I was going to get my book to read for a while in peace and quiet the revving started. The people over the road have woken up and the tour group in the hotel have finished breakfast and making a row as well. Time to be up and away I think. I am so looking forward to a night in the middle of nowhere on Saturday. I wish I had engaged my brain before I booked the extra night here. The extra night at Kamu Lodge would have been around the same price considering it is all inclusive. But oh well too late now I'm up and happy as larry.
My day and mood suddenly crumbled when I checked the news and see that my hero, Nelson Mandela has died. For the second day in a row I cry, big drops this time, rolling down my cheeks and plopping onto the big fat pillow. What a huge loss to the world and to South Africa in particular. A selfless man who worked tirelessly to get justice and equality for others, black and white. My hero, my idol, your journey is over, your suffering done; you have left this world a much much better place than it was and been an inspiration to many. What will become of the world you strived so hard for? For that, we will have to wait and see. May you rest in peace, Madiba.
Small pillows, noisy neighbours and all that rubbish seem so small and inconsequential now.
Feeling sad I need to get moving and out of here, so hailing a tuktuk I head off over the new bridge to the other side of the city to a huge empty lot where the Hmong New Year celebrations were being held. Hmong New Year is celebrated at slightly different times in other regions but always at sometime around the 15th day of the waning of the moon. Celebrations last until the new moon. The festival is known as Kin Chieng and the start celebrated with the sacrificing of a chicken. A sacred column is set up by the villages and the blood of the chicken is poured at the foot of the column to ward off evil spirits. People walk around the column and then step backwards three times to get rid of bad luck accumulated in the past year. They then step forward three times to make sure they have good luck in the coming year. Many different ceremonies are held to remember, bless or make wishes. Once the ceremonies start people are not allowed to spend money, work hard or venture far from home for three days, so often villages will,congregate in ones persons home for the first three days and begin their celebrations there.
This year in Luang Prabang the celebrations were being held in a huge space dominated by many stalls with fair ground games. The main ones where there are heaps of balloons lined up and you have to pop them with a dart to win a can of drink. Further along some market stalls selling all sorts of stuff, clothes, shoes, kitchen stuff and further along again a heap of gambling tables. Six animal pictures to place your money on. Slap it down on the table on the picture you think will win and if you want use a rock ('your rock') to sit on top and mark your money. Then someone pulls a string and a dice falls to the table, then again and another dice falls and finally the third dice. Each of the dice has each of the pictures that are on the table. If you bet on any of the pictures that have come up on the dice you win. Not sure of the odds and had a go just to find out but no luck. I believe there were cock fights going on as well, but I definitely didn't want to see that nd not sad that I missed it.
The main attraction of the celebrations was the matrimonial ball game, Mak Khon. Hmong are not allowed to marry within their own village so although expected to marry another Hmong they must seek that person out at events where all the villages get together, such as New Year celebrations like this.
Rows of marriage age boys and girls throw soft fabric balls around. If there is someone you fancy you throw the ball to them. If they fancy you then they throw it back again and so on. If you don't fancy them you throw it to someone else. It seemed like many of the kids were just friends throwing a ball around between them, or they were planning some massive orgies. Some of the kids were very young. I did see one couple who looked pretty serious and kept throwing the ball back and forth. She looked very glum, but later I noticed that the person that had been standing next to her had gone and suddenly her face had lit up and she was flirting with the guy. The next door person came back and she was serious again.
The game started when a past king, had a daughter but no husband and the king decided to find her kne. He asked six men to enter a competition, each to bring a bag to catch the balls that the daughter would throw into the sky. The lucky man was an orphan who had just arrived and the ball fell straight into his bag.
The clothing was nothing short of remarkable. There are three different groups of Hmong, black, white and some other colour that I can't remember. Each of the different groups had a different style of dress. The white group's women all had short white pleated skirts and weird tall hats. The other group wore bright coloured clothing and hats that looked like lamp shades. All were lavish, outstanding and must have been very uncomfortable. The majority of girls were beautifully but heavily made up and wore massively high heels and some had extreme eyelashes (complete with diamantes). So hard to describe but maybe the pictures help.
It was sad though because other than these girls dressed in traditional dress the other women were dirty, disshevelled and had gone to the pack. Many of them once upon a time would have played this game and found themselves a husband this way. Now look at them. Sad.
I keep wandering past the food stalls saying Sabadee as I went. So many smiles and little kids responding, so very cool. So very pleased that I went.
I watched a lady "grating" papaya for a while. While we would have grabbed a grater or mandoline she had the papaya in one hand and hit it with the blade of the knife held in the other. The blade was obviosuly very sharp for each time she hit the fruit it made a big indentation in the flesh. After a few minutes if doing this she then sliced the part she had slashed and long soft slivers fell off the fruit into the bowl. Quite a technique but even for me that likes to do things the old way, this looks far too technical, dangerous and slow. I checked out the chicken feet on the BBQ and immediately lost my appetite.
A tuktuk brought me back to town. My quick OK lunch was on the rivers edge at a restaurant full of fat Koreans smoking as they ate. Lunch done and I went back to the hotel. I contemplated going for a swim at the hotel opposite, but all was quiet around the hotel so here I am sitting in the bed writing this and thinking of the day.
Shattered is how I feel. I want a nap but the moment I thought if it, you guessed it. Traffic, shouting, revving, roosters. The "whole catastrophe" as Zorba the Greek would have said. Please let me have an early night tonight after my cooking class. Please.....
OK, it started bad and then got sad, then it came right, and then got even better.
After my wee break I set of along the river side to join the cooking class imhad booked for. I was feelign shattered and nearly turned round and came back to the hotel and then i remembered the noise and so I kept going.
After a wee wait we were picked up by tuktuks. Five os us in mine. Four bloody australians and me. Two guys from Adelaide, Evan (who is part Greek) and Richard and a couple (Chris and ?) from Sydney. The jokes started flying amd we had a great time despite nearly getting tipped out of the tuktuk. It was quite a ride to the cookery school set amongst the lotus ponds miles out of town. A gorgeous setting and worth the ride.
Our chef Chai was the cutest, cheeky guy who seemd to know what he was talking about and gave us some great tips. Chai would quickly demonstrate what we had to do and then leave us to it, with the help,of his aides they would keep an eye in what we were doing, and come to our aid as needed.
We started off by watching how sticky rice was prepared and cooked in the traditional cane baskets. Wash it off, soak, drain well and tip into cane basket which sits above boiling water for about 20 minutes. I'm addicted to the stuff. I'd love to get all the gear so I could do it at home, but suspect that I will be on a strict diet by the time I get back to NZ and sticky rice will not be part of that diet.
We then got to make a dip to go with the rice. I chose a grilled eggplant dip which was very much like babaganouch just a little more fiery. Into a the fire go the ingredients until they are charred, then grind away in a mortar and pestle. Smooth, smokey and delicious.
Marinated fish baked in banana leaves was next and there we learned how to wrap the little parcels so that we didn't lose any of the marinade.
But the best thing was learning to make the lemon grass stuffed with chicken. Slicing the lemon grass to make the little pockets was a challenge but it turned out that we didnt need to be as fussy as we were being as the chicken just gets shoved into the lemon grass. Fiddly and fun. And tasting it turned out to be the best.
There was constant banter around the table as we cooked and the Australians kept the laughter coming. Such lovely people (for Australians that is) as were some ladies from San Diego. A great bunch made the evening so good. Chef Chai, also a great source of amusement so we all had a few laughs.
The last dish we prepared was a purple sticky rice with coconut water which I didn't really want to try as it just didn't look appealing. I forgot to add sugar before cooking and ended up smothering it with uncooked sugar at the end and then adding tamarind over the top with some fruit to hide the purple stuff.
Cooking done we all sat at a long table to enjoy the fruits of out labours. On the table there was also a bean shoot soup, buffalo larb and a pumpkin salad.
Well, each dish was as good as the previous one. The dip divine, the soup so smooth, delicate and tasty. The pumpkin salad tasty and fresh. The fish probably the least favourite for me. The larb, as ever, was so so good, light, zingy, and just plain yum. But for me it was the chicken that took the cake, the lemon grass, coriander and mint each giving out their own subtle flavour and making it just so yum. Open up the lemon grass and the chicken just fell out. Just divine. Coupled with sticky rice and the dip that they had prepared it was superb.
Thank you Tamarind. I had a great night and look forward to practising the dishes I learned tonight.
A brisk walk home in the cool air woke me up. I sent some photos to the guys that I was cooking with, finished this and then its off to bed. 22:16 and its all quiet over the road, downstairs and next door. Fingers crossed. Tomorrow I'm off on another adventure, but sad that this adventure is nearly over.
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