I'm transcribing my Laos journal right now. Got sick multiple times with long-running gut illnesses from things I ate or water I drank in rural Laos. The food items were exposed to road dust next to a busy highway. I bought a sausage and it was put in a plastic bag without being grilled by a lazy female shopkeeper. There are no baht vending machines dispensing purified water, and chlorine tablets don't remove contaminants.

Kids are very friendly, but the adults can be suspicious as to why a foreigner would be Pied Pipering around their village.

If someone doesn't want to cook you anything in Laos, despite having a restaurant setup, don't insist. It takes a long time to build up a charcoal fire hot enough to cook stir-fry. In most of the country, noodle soup shops outnumber Thai style stir-fry shops 10 to 1.