Our Fun Day at Rice Fields Restaurant

jeremiahcustis(72)

Published in

#food

Words

715

Reading

4 min

Listen

Play

KIANG NA NOI

I should send this to the restaurant’s Facebook page. I’ll keep it in my photo library for the next time I invite someone here, because it doesn’t show up on Google maps in English.

This is one of my favorite restaurants in Luang Prabang. Big beers are about $1.50 and they food is always fresh and delicious. It’s a pretty cool idea having a restaurant in the middle of a rice field. It’s on the edge of town so it has a beautiful view of the surrounding mountains.

I met these two really cool girls at the dance club the night before. They called me up the next day and invited me to have lunch with them so we went to the Rice Fields restaurant in Luang Prabang.

I only had $10 and they didn’t have any money, but they had this crappy bike. After putting in some old gas from this water bottle it wouldn’t start so we had to jump start it. I haven’t had to jump start anything since the 90’s but it was lot’s of fun.

It looked liked something from a Mad Max prop.

It started up fine before adding this gas from this water bottle. At first, I thought it was Fanta cherry soda. My first job was refueling aircraft so I should know this, but does gas go bad if you keep it in a bottle like this for too long?

After riding it down the hill it kept dying, so I put about a dollar of gas in it to offset the old gas. Then I saw something I never thought I’d see, Pond put her mouth on the gas hole and blew the gas down so it would start. I wouldn’t even think of doing that.

One of the things I love about Laos is how friendly and helpful people are to each other.

We were about to give up, but this gas attendant had a good starting technique and got the engine going.

When the waitress came they told her, “We only came here to drink beer.” Wow these girls really speak my language. I tried my best to make it through Sober October, but how could I say no?

Coming to Luang Prabang has been like going down a rabbit hole of languages. I can speak Thai fluently and that made it easy to learn to speak and write Lao because they are so similar. It’s like if you were fluent in Latin then learned Spanish.

So after getting Lao down there is another surprise. People from the hilltribes have their own languages. These girls were from the Khmu tribe and kept speaking Khmu. Luang Prabang is a very international place. Some nights I’ll be out of the loop because conversations will go French, Chinese, Arabic, Korean, or another hilltribe language. This place is a dream come true if you love languages.

The rice is ready to be cut down and harvested. Rice can be grown twice a year here.

Growing melons.

After living in big polluted cities, it’s so nice to be surrounded by fresh air and green mountains.

The garden by our table.

I jumped down to get some better shots. I’m always looking out for snakes, but I’ve never seen any in Laos.

I don't need your rockin' chair
Your Geritol or your Medicare

These are some of the nicest and down to earth girls I’ve ever met. We’ll see if the city life changes them. They’ve only lived in town for a month and had never been to a supermarket or outlet store before. When we were shopping at the supermarket, they kept giggling and laughing and it was because it was their first time. It reminded me of the time when we brought my stepdaughter from the village to Bangkok and she freaked out seeing an escalator for the first time.