Exquisite food I have eaten- Laos edition

A couple of nights ago Marie and I had an absolutely equisite meal in Luang Prabang, at a place called 3 Nagas.

If you want pictures, please see this person's experience there. Marie and I shared a tasting menu, and we both left the restaurant completely full. The menu was all Laos traditional fare served in a high end manner, and a couple of highlights for me were the jaew bong (a paste with chili and bufalo skin), spicy pork sausages (similar to black pudding) and the coconut custard with caramelised ginger. The total bill for a shared tasting menu and a few wines was USD 35. I was floored by the quality of the food.

The restaurant was recommended to us by another couple who were on our Laos cooking class the day before. Yes this is a theme, Thai cooking class in Thailand, Laos cooking class in Laos etc.
Definition of globalisation: Two New Zealanders, migrating to the UK, meet an Argentinian and an Austrian, who are migrating to Singapore, and the meeting occurs in Laos.

Anyway; the cooking class was good, and again included a visit to the local market. The Laos cooking class was conducted a little differently. The main difference was that the instructor would make three dishes in front of us for us to taste, and then we would pick two which we would then make ourselves. Thus there is a bit of choice entering the class. Second, no ingredients were preprepared, so we had to chop everything ourselves. Also, Marie and I shared a workstation so we had to work as a team. Marie did most of the prep work, and I did most of the frying. I think that the Laos method set us up a lot better for recreating the dishes at home. However the flipside is that if you didn't know your way around a kitchen there would be a greater opportunity to make the dish inedible.

Another big plus for the Laos operation was that they had beers in the fridge, so we could enjoy our creations with Beer Laos. Very nice.
There is one particular fried eggplant recipe which was very tasty. Also, we made laap salad which was the tasty dish Cousin Aidan had made for us a couple of months back.