This is a new market in Laos called Huay Din Kob as the YouTuber, a Laotian woman found out from the vendor. As you can see, the ingredients can be quite unfamiliar to most of us, especially the rat. I’ve tasted rat meat cooked in tom yam in Mae Hong Son before, but it would be challenging to cook it myself. It takes great courage to put a rat into the pot. The rat seller claimed that the rats are wild.

What about the eels, catfish, tiny shrimp and crustaceans? The Lao people have their own ways to cook these things. What sort of seasoning would you use?