Noodle soups are eaten for breakfast, lunch and probably dinner too, though we didn’t actually try to look for soup at the end of the day. Some of the more popular vendors seem to run out of soup around late morning.
This is one of the simpler noodle soups, at Xieng Thong Noodle Soup, across from the eponymous wat:
Note the crispy fried garlic! We also noted that a pork noodle soup is the same price as a bottle of Beerlao. One US dollar is about 8,000 Laotian Kips.
The next day we tried to go to a noodle soup place recommended by Travelfish. They looked like they were already cleaning up, and there was a sign out front that said something like “Finished!” So we walked down the block and had khao soy at this place instead:
Like many Southeast Asian businesses, it is in the ground floor of a “shophouse”, with living quarters up above. Here is the “kitchen” (on the right in the picture above):
The soup came with copious quantities of fresh herbs and vegetables. Does it count as “cooking” if you dunk all this in the hot soup?
The soup itself has quite a lot more hot peppers than the noodle soup we had the previous day:
A couple of days later, we finally made it to the noodle shop across from Wat Senesoukharam, recommended by Travelfish.
The stock pot is outside and wood-fired:
The accompaniments are a little unusual. We haven’t seen string beans in this context before:
Au had soup with thin noodles, kind of like phở, being Vietnamese and all.
Mary had soup with wide noodles, and packed with peppers, being Mary and all.
As Monsieur M would say, “Worth the journey.”