Flirting with disaster

A quick update for you from Luang Prabang, Laos. We’ve been here a little under a week, and tomorrow we head to Hanoi where we’ll spend the holiday. As you’ll see from this story, we’re hoping for a Christmas miracle…

Luang Prabang sits on the Mekong River. It’s a sleepy, albeit beautiful, UNESCO world heritage site with dozens of Buddhist temples and monks. Today, Amy and I started the day by taking an hour-long ride upriver in a rickety longboat.

It was a lot of fun, and we got to see the river up close, including some fishermen, the muddy riverbanks, and, regrettably, a lot of pollution, in the form of these bubbly chemical masses floating downstream.

After the boat ride, we strolled along the Mekong and found a place to sit and relax and have a drink, and possibly some lunch. We picked a place with a good view of the river, and more importantly, somewhere that looked like it catered more to locals than tourists. Always interesting. Our waiter took our order, and when we told him all we wanted was to split a big beer, we got that look all waiters give cheapskates. He grudgingly got us our beer and went to take care of other tables.

In the meantime, a large party of Lao folks sat next to us and ordered a bunch of food. They seemed to be having a fun Saturday out, and they smiled and nodded to us, very friendly. After bringing out their order, our waiter came back to us and asked if we wanted another beer. Sure, why not? Then he asked us if we wanted to order something to eat. “No, I don’t think so…” Then he pointed over to our new friends at the table next to us – “How about that? Fish salad – Mekong catfish – Lao special dish…” Amy and I looked at each other, and feeling a bit pressured and guilty, we figured, okay, when in Rome, right?

A few minutes later out came the fish salad and its garnish. Turns out this is prepared like many other Asian dishes – a lump of meat, some rice, and garnish rolled up in a piece of lettuce or the like. How did I find out how to make it? Because the waiter showed us. With his bare hands. He pulled out the lettuce and garnish. Dipped his fingers in our rice. And made me a fish salad roll. “See? Very easy.”

I looked at Amy and said, “Well, this is where it gets dangerous.” Consider these rules I normally like to follow when dining in a foreign country:

1. In the Third World, never eat vegetables that don’t have a peel or you haven’t cleaned yourself. Leafy greens, in particular, are hard to clean and susceptible to bacteria.

2. Don’t eat fish out a river that a half-hour earlier you witnessed as totally polluted and clearly full of mud and who knows what kind of parasites.

3. Don’t have a strange man with substandard hygiene dip his fingers into your food.

So what did we do? We ate the whole thing. We had crossed our own bacterial Rubicon. Several times the waiter came up, or the table next to us leaned over, and asked, “you like?” And we smiled and nodded, slowly saying, “Uh huuuuuuuuh.” And it WAS delicious, the waiter was right. But the entire time, Amy and I discussed what kinds of antibiotics we had. I swilled my remaining beer in the ignorant hope that the alcohol would kill any microscopic nasties. We took pictures, just to remember what we ate if things turn bad. Amy asked me what I was doing, and I responded, “taking crime scene photographs.”

So there you have it, friends, the groundwork has been laid for some possible gastrointestinal fiasco. Start laying your odds now. Will we get sick? Will we find ourselves enjoying Christmas from the inside of a Hanoi bathroom, our own personal Vietnam? Will we “deck the halls” with Amoxicillin?

We’ll report back as nature reveals itself (so to speak) good or bad. Stay tuned…

Hoping our prayers are answered…