The Food

I did see a puppy's carcass in the cafe we ate at last night, but chose to have the tofu and tomato instead - my daily bread and butter!
Most of the locals eat meat when they're at the market, or out for dinner, but it's easy and more delicious ( I think) to avoid the meat. I normally have vegetable noodle soup for lunch, at about 50/60p. Then for tea myself and some other volunteers and small children normally eat out and just share different dishes - rice is staple, fried tofu and tomato (mmmm), green beans and garlic, 'vegetable' (which is normally watercress in abundance), bamboo shoots, small but pungent mushrooms and then chilli sauce to dip. Everything is cooked in MSG, sometimes so overpowering that i get a headache and you can't taste anything else. Potentially all my dishes will taste bland as a raw potato when I return!

Miss Khu cooking at the cafe

The market is the most interesting place to eat - the food is cooked in front of you, often with a baby strapped to the  back of the chef. All the meat and veggies are layed out on the table that you eat from, so if you don't mind having a chicken's bottom in your face then it's the place to be.  The Hmong and Dhao ladies are crammed in cheek by jowl slurping their noodle soup and picking bits of tough chicken from their teeth.  

Tofu, spring rolls, mushrooms, cabbage...mmm

For breakfast here they eat rice or noodles here. I normally go for a whole pineapple (which I've learned after the 3rd time of eating it in one sitting that it gives me belly ache...) so now I buy an omlette or fried eggs in a French bagette from a Vietnamese lady who has a wee stall. It's the equivalent of getting your sausage and egg butty back home. They pack the omlette with fresh mint and coriander - Dad you'd love it! Things that I'd never think of putting in mine back home but certainly will from now on.