All posts tagged: Vientiane

Breakfast buffets in S-E-A

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We had a few buffet breakfasts while traveling in South East Asia. These photos are the only evidence. The rest I’m afraid, has been destroyed devoured. Cafe Deco Macao The Venetian, Macau Cafe Deco offers 24/7 dining and seats 1000 diners. Breakfast at any of The Venetian restaurants was included with our suite so we picked the buffet option at Cafe Deco Macao. My breakfast was a croissant, a strawberry danish, smoked salmon, sausage, salami, ham, samosa, curried rice, chickpeas, corn, tomatoes, mushrooms, hashbrown, scrambled eggs, bacon, fried egg. I sampled about 10% of the breakfast dishes on offer. There were breakfast foods from many different cuisines including Chinese, Japanese and Indian. The buffet station stretched around the edge of this 32,000 ft² dining area and it’s possible to get lost on your way back to your table. I know this because I got lost! We begin with the most epic breakfast buffet I have ever laid eyes on. Everything about this hotel was decadent and over the top. 40 levels, 3000 suites, an indoor canal, …

Vientiane: Buddhas and Temples

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Vientiane Attractions We didn’t spend the whole time in Vientiane eating. Honestly, we didn’t. After sorting out our Thai visa at the embassy in the morning, The Koala and I spent the rest of the day apart from our group, touristing around on our own. Haw Phra Kaew or Temple of the Emerald Buddha have lovely grounds and is now a museum of buddha relics. A 45cm jade Buddha figurine was housed here for a time many, many years ago but now resides in a temple in Bangkok, Thailand. Wat Si Saket is just across the road. Come here to see buddha figurines and a temple. How cool is this leaning chair? Then we hopped onto a jumbo. A jumbo is like the Thailand tuk tuk but with 2 benches so that the passengers face each other. They can comfortably fit 6 although you could cram 8 or 9. Tuk tuk seats face forward and comfortably seat 2 adults, although you could cram in 4. Our driver didn’t speak a word of English, but he had …

Vientiane: Joy Restauant on the Mekong Promenade

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In the city of Vientiane, the Mekong Promenade is wide, the river being very low during dry season and during the day the promenade is peaceful and quiet. You kind of wonder where is everyone? But come sunset, pop up bars and restaurants line the streets and finding a good spot to watch the changing sky is easy. Just before another pink sunset, we find ourselves at Joy Restaurant on the Mekong Promenade. The colourful display of food entices us and after a Beer Lao or two, we choose a few dishes by physicall pointing instead of choosing from the printed menu. It’s so much better to be able to select from a kitchen rather than trusting translated menus. This allows you to order dishes that look good on that day rather than picking your usual favourites. The wiggling bits coming out of the shells told me that the cockles are still alive. The prawns looked particularly plump. The Koala had never tried cockles before and it’s a novelty to get them at all let alone fresh …

Vientiane: Crickets, Mystery Meat and other Eats.

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Our first dinner in Laos was in Vientiane at Khop Chai Deu. Our Intrepid Travel guide, Golf chose this large restuarant/bar not far from the Mekong River for our group dinner. Local dish of steamed fish with banana leaf sounded good to me and The Koala got a butter chicken masala. Some of the others got deep fried crickets. I gave it a whirl and to be honest, it just tasted like nachos. Especially when eaten with a salsa chili type sauce. Is anyone offended by the taste of nachos and a spicy salsa? So, if you can get over any mental or visual phobias of eating deep fried crickets, the taste isn’t something to worry about. As much as we loved eating local foods, we were really craving a standard New Zealand style flat white. We found these coffeeas at JoMa Bakery Cafe (across the road from Khop Chai Deu). These roast vege wraps were good too. The bill for 2 coffees and 2 wraps came to 86,000 kip / $13.70 NZ / $10.70US which is …

We are home.

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It has been an epic 65 days of traveling, eating, drinking, experiencing and adventuring with my husband The Koala. Along the way, we’ve traveled with friends and family, met up with old friends and made new friends. We visited 7 countries and stayed in 18 different places in south east asia. Brunei, Malaysia (Borneo), Hong Kong, Macau, Vietnam, Laos and Thailand. It’s been exotic and surreal. Being back in front of my mac, in our lounge (looking just the way we left it) it feels like the last 2 months happened to someone else. In the 2 months we’ve been away, I “cooked” only 3 times. A half day cooking class in Chiang Mai, and if you count it as cooking, we had local BBQ where you cook raw ingredients at your table at a restauarant- we did this 2 times (Vang Vieng, Laos and Koh Phangan, Thailand). All other meals – I’m talking an average of 3 meals a day – were eaten out. That’s 192 meals right there! I didn’t photograph every single …