The dalat, or market in English, is where it’s at. If you don’t raise your own food, someone from your household goes to the market every day.
Above the Dalat an Nong Nee-ow, the closest all day market to where we were living. About 5 kilometers off the end of the aproach to the runway in Vientiane, sometimes an incongruous passenger jet would fly through about two feet above the Wat.Even with refrigeration, many people buy the food only when they need to cook a meal, cook it, eat it, and go to the market all over again. I don’t think most people understand the idea that refrigeration keeps meat from spoiling and it can be kept for days, or that vegetables don’t wilt. I still see lots of cooked food kept under cover on the table until eaten.
Remember also that for 99.9% of the populations food is cooked at home, not bought at restaurants, that’s why we as tourists have such a difficult time finding restaurants in small towns. For people who don’t grow their own rice and raise their own animals a trip to the market is a daily routine. In larger towns the market is open all day.
Fish Dalat TatluangMost markets have at least a basic noodle restaurant, it’s for people waiting to take the bus, shoppers who can’t withstand the temptation for a bowl of foe, and the people working at the market. In bigger towns you can get all kinds of to-go food. Baguette sandwiches, laap, barbequed meat, sticky rice, just about anything to eat. If there is a stand selling soft drinks in plastic bags, often they will have coffee too. Sometimes one of the soup restaurants sells coffee. I look for the telltale can with the sock for filtering, the only method that seems to be in use for brewing up coffee.
Often the bus station is at the market or right next to it. People bring their produce in on the bus. “Bus” often means a pickup truck with a couple benches to sit on. It’s a tossup where I go first when I get into a new town, the market to see if there is any food, or the guest house to get a room.
Dalat Muang LongDepending on the season there can be a distinct lack of fruit at the market. The only fruit I can almost always count on is bananas, if close to China the mandarin and blood oranges are a treat. Every market, even in Vientiane contains fruit, vegetables, and meat from the forest.
For many people the market is the primary people watching venue. Early in the morning is best, between six and seven. Many times people bring their babies with them to show them off. Local farming women come to the market to sell some vegetables, to make some pocket change, then go home an hour or so later when they have sold what they brought. People often wear their early morning clothes, a pair of sweat pants and flip flops, even pyjamas.
There are two kinds of market, or more often two parts of the market, the dry and the wet side. Dry markets usually have concrete floors, and permanent roofs. Items for sale include cloths, soaps, tools, stereos, even the money changer and jewellery. The wet market is all the vegetables and meats. The wet market has some type of drainage plan even if it’s just a ditch to carry away all of the dripping bits from the meat and fish. Wet markets in the rainy season can get pretty soupy if they are set up on dirt. The dirt becomes mud and you walk on planks propped up over the mud.
Pieces of Mai Dtak, it's very resinous and used to start the charcoal that everyone cooks on. Banana leaves in the backgroundMy favourite market in Vientiane is Kua Din, it’s next to the central bus station in the centre of town. Kua Din is sprawling dirty and unregulated. It contains a wet and dry market and the prices are cheaper than Tong Kahn Kaem. They used to have parking out front, now it’s inside and less convenient. It also contains my favourite foe shop which I blogged about
here.The main path running into Kua Din from the front is a dirt track often with water on it and busy with those push carts called lau, coming and going. The push cart guys make ten or twenty cents a trip and are the only method most people use to bring goods to or from the market. I never noticed the lau guys until I started looking at the carts themselves. I saw a beautiful one being made at the wood shop that was making some doors and windows for me.
New Lau stackedThe sides are joined to the top and bottom using blind mortise joints and most of the other joints are through mortise and tenon. A well made cart goes for about $35 without the wheels.
Lau at Dalat Tat LuangThe most famous market in town is Dalat Sao, misnamed the morning market, it doesn’t open up until 8 or 9, hardly a morning market in Laotian terms, and I think most shops close at 4. Dalat Sao is exclusively a dry market. I think it used to be both, therefore it’s name. Many people go to the “morning market” to buy souvenirs, for Laotians it’s also a good place to buy a fridge or a cell phone or a pair of jeans. Upstairs are a very concentrated number of gold stores.
Lau loaded upMy main market in Laos this time was called Dalat Sii Kai. It’s out past the northern bus station on the road to Luang Prabang, just where the road makes the turn to the north out of Vientiane. It used to take me about twelve minuets to make the drive if traffic was light. Dalat Sii Kai was busy enough to rate a couple policemen with folding automatic rifles, one just behind the BCEL bank with a view to the gold stores on the West side of the market (bored to tears, view is bad for people watching and no one to talk to, it‘s an alley between the fruit sellers and the front of the market no one uses), and another on the South in front of another gold store. I used to see a lot of people coming in from quite a ways up the Luang Prabang Road going there. I think the next big market to the north is at that Hmong town Lak Ha Sip Sung. Dalat Sii Kai is all concrete, and there are a lot of food stalls in the middle. The bank even changes foreign currency. There are enough vendors to avoid price fixing and there’s even a fruit lady who sells durian out of season for 15K a kilo as I remember.
Creag has a drink at Dalat Sii KaiOften the market chore was left to me. My youngest kid was a lot to lug around and when my wife didn’t feel like going so she would just send me. Sometimes I’d take my oldest kid Creag. Last time we were in Laos in 03, or maybe the time before that in 01, my wife and sisters in law were positive that I would get ripped off going to the market. When quizzed as to how much I paid for stuff I never remembered anyway. Soon I started remembering and my answers were met with silence and steady looks. I was getting the same price.
By now after a few more years of training I notice how much everything costs and I remember. If someone quotes me a price that’s way too high I don’t negotiate, I just go away. If the price just seems steep I buy it but go elsewhere next time. Nineteen times out of twenty I seem to get the right price first time. The merchants used to treat me very well anyway. Replacing the bruised fruit with the good ones, or showing me how to choose the ripe ones. I was probably pretty noticeable, I’ve never seen another falang in Dalat Sii Kai. Too far out of town for the curious tourist, (other than you know who), also too far out for expats to be commuting.
Dalat Sao RoofBear in mind that I’m speaking a mangled pathetic but understandable Laotian. Other than learning how to flirt, learning how to buy stuff is one of the first things one learns in a language. More than likely the market ladies are just taking pity on this poor old guy that has to try to buy stuff.
The only time I do negotiate is up north when buying from Chinese. By Chinese I mean the Chinese from China, like within the last five years from China. Even then the negotiations are brief and friendly. I’ve only seen Chinese selling dry goods which I don’t have much occasion to buy anyway. Once I didn’t know the price of something so I just counter offered half the stated price, the merchant simply replied OK, I guess he was about five steps ahead of me. You have to laugh at the setting, here we both are in a public market in Laos, which might as well be the end of the earth for either of us, talking price in a language very foreign to both of us. I try to at least use the numbers in Chinese and I call everyone comrade or good friend but when I try to speak quickly all that comes out is Laotian.
Dried Game for Sale (civet?)The closest real market to where I stayed outside Vientiane was Dalat Nong Nee-ow. It was halfway to Dalat Sii Kai so I used to just go all the way for the better selection and lower prices. The exception is if I only wanted a couple things or if it was after 5 in the afternoon. Seemed like after five I’d see one accident per day and I didn’t want to be that accident. Lots of high school kids out then and young guys just off work, and commuters, and people just going to the market like me.
Dalat Nong Nee-ow charges an extra twenty cents a kilo for sticky rice and everything else in proportion. I liked and willingly paid the higher price for the BBQ chickens (Ping Gai) at 27K. I’d buy a large chicken dinner for six with all the trimmings for seven dollars. Besides two chickens I’d get the sour vegetables, and a couple jeaos, with three or four kilos of sticky rice. Usually jeao mac len and jeao pa dek. I’d eat the mac len as long as it didn’t have too much pa dek. The jeao pa dek I’ve learned to take a pass on, not that hungry yet.
Laos doesn’t yet have a supermarket, but it does have a few mini marts where foreigners can buy chocolate and blue cheese, or the newspaper from Thailand. For now, if you want to cook meat, you have to go buy it from the meat lady and bat the flies away. I wonder for how long. Already there is the first attempt at a shopping centre, the new Dalat Sao. From reports it’s a big flop without many stores being rented out. We'll see when the first golden arches and Walmart appear.
Dalat Sao New next to the Old
