This was another day where I needed to split into three parts, each event giving me a different perspective on Laos.

The newly opened Lao Chinese Expressway takes you between the capital and Vang Vieng in well under 2 hours, but we were to take the old road for 3/4 of the journey to then pick up the superdooper new road just before Vang Vieng.

Firstly, we were heading for the village of Ban Lak 52. Put more simply, 52 km. Ban is village. Lak is a unit of distance in the Lao language. A place so named because it is located 52 km north of Vientiane. Can you imagine the conversation? …..”Hello, where are you from?”. Response, ” I’m from 52 km “. Ban Lak 52 was created by the Lao Government to relocate 25,000 Lao citizens who had fled to Thailand during the Vietnam War, and were requested to return. Rather than return these people to ordnance-filled mountains, they set them up on this flat piece of land close to the capital. I suppose it’s like Milton Keynes, but wildly wildly different 🙂

With a bit of mumbling from my now three cohorts ( Nu, a first day trainee guide had now joined us for the trip north) we stopped at the edge of the road, walked across a scrubby piece of land to an unassuming metal structure beyond. The beyond was magical !

A sizeable market selling everything you need for home life in rural Laos: Clothes, shoes, mattresses, blankets, cosmetics, toys, food, do-it-yourself temple paraphernalia, motorbikes…. I took 90 photographs, but will tell the story through pictures of food only…

Now, I wouldn’t classify myself as a big foodie ( although many of my friends are), but I was like a kid in a candy shop here. ….ooo….arrhh….cor….wow…So many expletives left Tony, I am sure, with the view that the civilisation from whence I came was clearly not all it was cracked up to be. I wonder if there is something primaeval about seeing foodstuffs you have never seen before, let alone eaten, and maybe a thrill of discovering things that even John Lewis food hall hasn’t found and packaged in cellophane? 🙂

So here goes, a photo montage with commentary from Tony ( in main shot), who seemed to know an uncanny amount about all of this stuff.

Oh, and I was instructed to buy this bucket of assorted foodstuffs, yes, including on the top a packet of painkillers ( is it not illegal to push drugs in this way?). Total cost 4 GBP. Read on…….