Digging up a bit of home.

Every month at Vientiane International School, the staff social club has a Sundowner event which is organised by the staff from a different designated country each month. This essentially means sitting around drinking Beerlao with the odd splash of wine, and a few nibbles. February was New Zealand's turn and for some crazy reason I suggested it would be a great idea to have a hangi.
Having not actually put a hangi down before by myself, and with not a lot of others around with a huge amount of experience I began to think it may have been a mistake to have ever mentioned it. The excitement of some of the other staff at the mere mention of it however meant that really......I was going to have to make a go of it and just hope for the best.
The logistics of such an undertaking were complicated by the fact that good hangi stones were always going to be hard to find in Lao PDR. With a few enquiries put into place we set off for Darwin for a brief Xmas trip. Apparently the trip was to catch up with family and friends. This, of course, was just a ruse. The real reason for the trip was to collect hessian oyster sacks from the Mr Barra fish shop and to source some muslin cloth from Spotlight and an old clean sheet from an Op shop. Mission accomplished, we made our way back to Laos to be met with a delivery from one of the many mining companies operating in Laos. A wooden crate filled with 80 or 90kg of spent excavator teeth.....You bloody rippa.
With things falling in place and the date quickly approaching I figured I ought to find a basket somewhere. Eventually I just went off to one of the many little 'hardware' shops dotted around the town and purchased 20m of steel rod and carried it back to VIS on my motor-bike, (adventure-plus trying not to swipe anybody on the way), drew up some basic plans and gave it all to one of the amazingly helpful Lao school guards who promptly whipped it into a perfect hangi basket.

Then of course we needed wood. Went to the 'Old Chinatown' part of town where there are piles of wood lining the roads waiting to be sold. Unfortunately, being only a week before Chinese NewYear, it was all more expensive than usual. (Not quite sure what the wood is especially useful for at Chinese NewYear but anyway....that's what the first 'wood-lady' told us) This meant that I had to fork out a massive $8 for the wood we needed. Never mind..... the goal was getting closer.
A couple of quick trips to the 103 markets to stock up on spuds, pumpkin, onions, kumara, (not quite but pretty close), and a bit of cabbage and we were almost done. The day before the event I dug the pit which involved breaking the shovel handle twice in the clay. Fortunately the cost of a shovel is $4 so what can you expect? Then I scooted off to the Japanese cold storage just up the road from home and bought 3 chickens and a couple of small legs of pork. Meanwhile another Kiwi from school had snuck over the border to Thailand and returned with a beautiful leg of NZ lamb that was cheaper than it would have cost at home......go figure. The fire was stacked and lit, veges peeled, basket packed, in the ground, a couple of prayers sent up and the wait began.

As anyone who's ever been involved with a hangi before well knows, (especially with new steels and wood), the anxiety over whether or not it's actually cooked can drive you to madness. Perhaps this is why drinking has always been a co-existing event with a hangi. 4 hours of agony later and my reputation as a Kiwi was well and truly on the line. There were a bunch of people with drinks in hand and only a couple of packets of chips to keep them dry. The piles of empty waiting plates were just making the whole thing worse. I tried to sneak around the back of the new Arts building, (where I had hidden the whole event away from prying eyes), with just a couple of helpers to dig it up and see if we needed to make a mad dash up the road for a load of Khouvieng Fried Chicken. But there must have been a sense of things going on and suddenly there was a small group of spectators gathering around to witness the potential weeping and sobbing of a grown man. With a silver fern on my sleeve and a GoPro camera on my head, we launched into the unveiling.
As soon as that wonderfully nostalgic smell came wafting from the freshly uncovered pit my pride took a big breath and stood up to be counted. We bravely marched the basket straight into the outdoor cafeteria where everyone was waiting and unwrapped the sweet flavour of success. Everything unpacked onto the tables and it was very swiftly mauled by the pack of curious onlookers. The meat, (Lao certainly love their pork) was disappearing as quickly as I could cut it up. Fortunately Kim, (secondary principal), grabbed a plate and stacked it with goodies so that there would be some left for me at the end of it all. Thanks Kim. Otherwise I pretty much would've missed out. (note to self....must pick more) In the end it was a tremendous success and everyone seemed to be mightily impressed. Even had enough veges left over for the traditional hangi fry-up for breakfast on Saturday morning......Oh yeah!

I'm not sure how many times a hangi has been cooked in Laos, but now I know that it's at least once.
Big thanks to Mr Toh for making a fantastic basket, Nick and Pani for their help stacking the fire and joining me on vege peeling duty, Claire and Chris for a beautiful leg of lamb, Lara for providing two bags of great stuffing that got absolutely moolahed in the first minute of eating, Greg Smith for hunting down the steels, and all the rest of the crew for organising plates, bread and beer. It was a lot of stinking hot work...... and I sure can't wait to do it all again.