For most of our trip we were driving long hours in vans and buses through winding mountainous roads to get to our next stop. Our last city in Laos was Luang Prabang which was a bit different from our previous stops because Luang Prabang is a UNESCO world heritage city.
Coconut Garden is the first place we had dinner in Luang Prabang. It was a nice outdoor seated restaurant that we ate at with beautiful lights overhead that put us all in a good mood (especially since our lunch had been at a local local restaurant in a small roadside shop in the middle of the mountains). We ordered what our guide suggested, sharing river weeds and spicy buffalo sausage.
The river weeds were veggie tasting and not super popular with the group. They reminded me a little bit of the popular Korean seaweed chips only more green tasting, or bitter. The buffalo sausage was spicy, honestly too spicy for me to eat even a full slice of one. I ended up eating just the smallest bit, but it wasn’t for me. What I ordered for myself was fried crispy coconut rice and sour pork salad.
I picked the peppers off (of course) and enjoyed the most of my meal. It was a strange taste combination. There were peanuts and pork and crispy bits that gave it a nice savory flavor but there was this odd underlying sourness that kept me from being able to just eat it on its own without a palette cleanser or even finishing it as a whole.