Stuffed, fried frog

The frog was stuffed with sausage mince and deep fried. It was so deeply fried you couldn’t even taste that it was frog, but you could tell from the shape. I don’t know what they did with the eyes but luckily you couldn’t see them. This same restaurant chucked a huge amount of chicken stock unnecessarily into a grilled fish. I have started to notice they put chicken stock into everything! Unilever, again you’ve done a good marketing job. I won’t be eating it for a while once I get home. Unilever put on a huge ‘Walls’ carnival by the river with a concert, jumping castles and ice- cream related activities. It was rather impressive, but there would probably be complaints if the same thing was done in Australia. Walls is the Streets brand of ice- cream in the Thai/ Lao market. I think they have done well here- they can price a Cornetto the same as a Lao meal!

I went to a large concert in the carpark of I- TECC, this large shopping complex/ trade hall. It has a cinema, a supermarket, bowling alley and snooker room. It didn’t feel like Laos, it was more like Thailand or Malaysia. There were some pretty big Lao bands/ pop groups playing. There was a lot of lip- synching and bad dancing. It was quite amusing though. It was the most Lao people gathered at once- probably a couple of thousand.

Gearing up to new years, people wear Hawaiian shirts and put flowers on their computer and on their bike. Water guns are for sale everywhere.