Laos : Day 2 : Vientiane - Ban Na Hin

There weren't many activities that day as it was travelling day. We went to Ban Nahin. It took us about 7 hours, as Ban Nahin was about 280km away from Vientiane.

 Breakfast

Breakfast was very yummy. Both the fried rice and noodles suited my palate. And another hot favourite among our group members was the minced pork porridge which was very savoury and had good consistency. 

The breakfast bar 

After breakfast, we went outside of the hotel building for a bit ... 

This was the area where the night market was last night  

The white building was our hotel

In fact, there were many restaurants within walking distance from our hotel. So just before we set off, we introduced ourselves - our names, where we came from and our occupations. So now that we were in our second day of the tour, we felt more comfortable, getting along with the other members in our group. 

The van that we were in felt claustrophobic. It was quite enclosed, and we couldn't see anything in front of us, as the seats were very high. Some of the windows were small, and we could not see much of outside. The van carried 12 of us each. 

We made a few toilet stops along the way ... and then another stop for lunch at a local shop. Here, however, there were plenty of Lao snacks on sale ... and we were pretty curious to see what was on sale ... 

 Peanut brittle

 Puffed rice

Many of us bought the banana chips, which tasted very natural in flavour; I thought they tasted quite natural, and did bring home 2 packets. Mom tasted them back home, and thought our local ones were yummier. Heh.

 Dried fish 

Dried meats - like jerky, I think

 Grilled meats

 Inside these banana leaf packets were fermented fish or pork - something like our kasam, I think 

 One of the stalls next to the cafe/shop

The pink-coloured eggs are balut. The local people warm the eggs up on the grill, peel and then eat them ... 

 The roadside stall opposite the road from our eatery

For lunch, we had ... 

Loving the basket

Inside is sticky rice or khao niaw 

 So much of rice! 

This is the fermented pork 

So the locals used their fingers to eat. What they do is that they pinch a little bit of the sticky rice and roll it into small balls, dip into dishes and then eat them. The sticky rice isn't really sticky like ours back home, perhaps it had to do with the way they are cooked. Back home, we normally steam our rice in water ... but the Lao people steam their rice dry, in a basket.  

Egg fried rice for me ...

Hmn ... the rice was too soggy, the taste too basic ...

We continued our journey after lunch ... 

 Ban Nahin

Lovely view of the mountains 

 

 Soon we reached our hotel at Sainamhai Resort. We stayed at individual cottages ...

 

Our room 

 The bath and toilet

Our cottages

Photo by BW

  

 Our cottage was the furthest away from the main resort building .... 

The main building - the kitchen and cafe are here at the main building 

Behind the main building was a beautiful river .... 

 Beautiful Namsanam River

 We could sit at the deck at the main building and just look at the river

Ban Nahin seemed very isolated and quiet. And apart from the group of us at the premise, there were no other guests at the resort. When we arrived at Ban Nahin, however, the weather turned really cold. Many of us were worried as we did not bring warm clothing with us. In our list of things to pack issued by our tour leader, we were only asked to bring a light jacket. So we checked the weather forecast and was alarmed to find out that the temperature would drop till 9 degrees that night. 

Indeed as the sun set, it got very cold. It did not help that the wind was blowing really strongly. We had to eat at the resort because there was really nowhere else to eat. With our rice, we ordered ...

 Beef Laab
Laab is minced meat with mixed with onions, lemongrass, herbs and spices

 Steamed fish with lemon

 Mixed vegetables

Hmn ... we did not like the food very much. Plus, the food turned cold very fast in that chilly weather.