OK I HAVE BEEN GONE & DONE IT!

OK I have gone & done it. I ate dog. Yep, dog, as in a family dog. My Laos friends live high up in northern Laos. Their family had a dog, a black dog, which is traditionally considered better eating or  better for your health. It kept running away and they knew that someone else would eventually kill it for dinner so they decided to do it themselves. They also knew that l was arriving after a 7 or 8 hour journey in a  bus filled with all manner of produce & people along some very tired & winding roads. And they appreciated that I had  gone way out of my way to visit them. So as a festive treat, they cooked up in Laos style, black dog, lizard, bamboo rattan & spiced wood.  How could l refuse?

 And also as they had remembered that a couple of years ago, I had asked many questions about the consumption of dog and that I would be interested in trying it. I had never been given the opportunity before. Dog meat is not as easily come by in Asia as most Westerners think.
Anyway, Im glad that I was not there to see the whole cooking process, Im told that dog meat does not give off the best aroma when cooking.
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The family was over-joyed to offer me something that I had never been offered before. They are very poor and are very grateful for the small gifts that l bring them. One time, Lae my good Laos friend, asked me to buy his father-in-law a miner's torch so he could go & catch frogs in the local pond. He has only one kidney and his health limits his contribution to the family income. It is my favourite & most practical gift that I think I have ever had the good fortune of giving. .And Ive been pleased to accept his meals of fried frogs in garlic & lemon grass many times, presented with a beaming generous smile.

So as hesitant & wary as I was to taste dog meat for the first time, thinking will I be crossing an unthinkable line in doing so. I sat on the floor in good company with generous hearts and enjoyed their welcoming feast served with lots of my favourite sticky rice, and lao lao, a fermented rice whiskey of lethal alcohol percentage. It didn't taste like chicken. It was more beefy & bony
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 Being mostly vegetarian, well probably 80%, I try not to eat mammals, sticking mostly to fish & chicken. But when lm home in Australia, if Mum cooks up a lamb roast, I never turn it down.
So this is sort of how l felt. Not a perfect analogy but morally, how can l discern between the life of a baby lamb and a black dog?

The people in most rural parts of Laos are subsistence farmers. Their religion is animistic Buddhism, a combination of the philosophy of the Buddha with an acknowledgement to the spirit world with all its good & bad ghosts. They have survived for hundreds & possibly thousands of years by eating whatever is available to them. Whether its lizards, insects, monkeys, squirrels ect. There is very little natural wild life in Laos, not even many wild birds. They have eaten them all. Whatever wildlife has survived is now hiding in remote & difficult terrains. And after suffering from the Vietnam War which they had no involvement in except to be the target bombings of the Americans as they were chasing Viet Cong. Laos is the most bombed country on earth. Between 1964 & 1973, the US dropped 2 million tons of bombs on a peaceful country. In Laos it is called the Secret War and hundreds of thousands of Laos civilians were bombed & displaced. There is no exact number of casualties known. But every year, 100 more people are killed or maimed by unexploded bombs, half of them children.

After 2 days with my good friends, I force myself back on yet another crowded bus, heading towards the Thai border. This time there was a motorbike on the roof as well. The journey is 8 or 9 hrs of tight winding roads without a stretch.  All that can be seen is endless green peaks and valleys hanging with heavy mists. There is a wild remoteness in northern Laos. It never becomes monotonous and it lulls you into a deep thoughtful mood like a meditation. It is difficult to imagine any other world and leaves you with a feeling of not wanting to go back to any other world. That's always how l feel about Laos when lm there, it is by far one of my favourite countries in the world.