Fried Fish with Garlic and a Vegetable Salad (by G)

Yesterday I took a very hot ride on a very shitty bicycle around the island of Don Khong. It was a nice ride but I was wrecked by the end of it and had not eaten since breakfast due to a persistant nausea induced by physical effort.  By them time 6:30 came about I had recovered and was starving and decided to get an early dinner.

This time I decided on fried fish (and I thought a salad would be refreshing after such a hot day). The fish was a couple of bony steaks (of what species I'm not entirely sure) incinerated to crunchy perfection. The salad was, to my surprise, coleslaw - too over dressed to be refreshing. The combination of the two was pretty good though and I seriously do enjoy fish steaks fried 'til jerky like - some lime would have been a welome addition though.  Just after the meal was served a couple of cats came lurking about for tid-bits (which they got), then later a very happy dog came by (I didn't give him any fish because there were only sharp bones left).  I felt like Dr Doolittle, sitting alone surrounded by animals.

Later some other  people came to relieve the isolation. One of them was a Laotian tour driver called Joy (seriously) who had previously worked at the Australian Embassy in Vientiane and is currently driving a group of Japanese teachers through Laos to gather information about Laotian agriculture. He'd learned English at the age of 12 and preferred speaking it to Lao or French.  When he said hello to me I invited myself over to his table where we drank and chatted past closing time.  It's handy to have someone who can say, 'leave a light on, leave the beer fridge open and I'll settle the bill in the morning'.  He also very kindly offered to pay for all the beer - which I accepeted (I think he had some kind of personal miscelaneous budget from his clients of which he had a fair bit left).