Pig Faces

Despite the fact that seeing a multitude of pig faces on display in the market may strengthen the resolve of some to never eat flesh again, it is rather difficult to be a vegetarian here. The problem is that most ingredients, when added to soup--for instance, are rather unrecognizable to the untrained eye. And asking restaurant wait staff and food vendors is no guaranty of clarity. We take some risk that we will be given something we'd prefer not to ingest--like beef, pork, or dairy--whenever we eat.   For instance, Anne and I came upon a stall with two girls selling what signage said was: "The Father of All Buns." It looked like a bready dumpling that had been deep-fried. We've have a few of these things up to now and most have something inside them, like beef or beans or pork--South Asians love pork.   When we asked what was in the buns, if anything, the answer came back was simple, "Yes."   Knowing they did not understand us, we asked very clearly if the buns had meat in them.   "Yes," was the reply.   "Oh. What kind of meat?" we asked, and added, "Ga (chicken)? Or beef, bo? Or is it pork?"   They nodded. "Yes."   We thought it unlikely that chicken, beef, and pork would all appear together so we asked, "How about fish? Do you put any fish inside?"   "Yes."   Getting nowhere, we tried a different tack. "Do you have any with just veg, no meat, only vegetables? Any with chay (vegetables in Vietnamese)?"   "Yes."   "Well, which one?"   They smiled and made a motion like we should choose one and find out.   The upshot of all of this is that we bought one of these buns and discovered that the inside was filled with nothing. We suppose all those "yes" answers meant that meat or veg could be inside if we put them there. Thanks for that.   The price for the above-mentioned bun was 10,000 VND (Vietnam Dong), which sounds like a lot, but is really about 0.80 CAD (Canadian Dollars). So, while not as bad as it looks, it still was not a great value.   Where lunch costs a minimum of 10,000 VND, a cheap night's accommodation is 170,000 VND and dinner out easily costs 250,000 VND, it's easy to get sticker shock. For Pete's sake, I've bought junker cars for less than 500 USD (United States Dollars).   On the subject of value: I must say that Laos was a disappointment. Everything in Laos was 2 to 5 times more expensive than everywhere else we've been; that combined with accommodations which generally had horsehair mattresses, and toilets and poor plumbing which caused sewage to back up into the floor of our bathroom (I kid you not) made Laos a poor value indeed. Insult to injury, the Laos food is meat-heavy and rather tasteless in comparison to Thai or Indian. In fact, our best meals in Laos were Indian.   Come to that, the best value place we've been thus far--even with the immense overcrowding, poverty, air and sound pollution, and screaming touts--is, incredibly, India. What makes India great that it is too big and crazy to focus too much on tourists. Laos is small and squeezing the tourists for every dime while keeping them at arm's length is fast becoming an easy passtime.    Don't get me wrong, India has its share of vermin gougers and Vietnam also practices some gouge tactics, but more is going on in these larger countries and most of the people have lives outside tourism. Heavy import placed on tourism breeds contempt and/or apathy for visitors. That's a bummer most of the world's garden spots have yet to come to grips with.    NB