Luang Prabang Salad
I've been in Southeast Asia since early February, retracing some of my past footsteps and setting down new ones, too. It's my first time in Laos, a land-locked country that has been open to western tourists only 10 or 15 years.
Luang Prabang, the most popular tourist destination in Laos, is a low-key, provincial capital city and former home to one of the old monarchs of Laos. Now a UNESCO World Heritage site, Luang Prabang is likely to remain a small, walkable city between the Mekong and Khan rivers with a lovely mix of traditional and colonial architecture.
The cuisine of Laos is similar to, but also distinct from its Southeast Asian neighbors. And there's French influence in many popular dishes, a vestige from the days when Laos was part of the French colony of Indochine.
The Lao have always eaten lots of greens and a wide variety are farmed in the countryside surrounding Luang Prabang. But probably the most popular leafy green in these parts is watercress. We saw watercress growing outside of the hillside village of Ban Long Lao about 25km from Luang Prabang.