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Published: December 30th 2013
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"thit cho"
wait until you see the big pigs on the small motorcycles! Animal welfare in Vietnam,not to mention dogs in Slovakia and Spain
Next door to my new residence is a centre for the torture of animals.
In Britain we have abattoirs which are supposed to be humane. They are humane - humans have nothing to fear because the place is nice and clean and away from public view. But the animals are terrified. I know because I have seen them.
In Vietnam, they don’t have so many abattoirs. Why deprive the people of the pleasure of seeing the animals suffer? The living lie bound, next to the dead and the half-dead.
They keep their “pet” dogs chained up all day. One possible excuse is the likelihood of the dog being stolen.
In Slovakia, more than 10%!o(MISSING)f the population is “Roma” . There is a 10%!l(MISSING)ikelihood of your dog being stolen. In Vietnam, nearly 100%!o(MISSING)f the population is Vietnamese. Your dog will be stolen.
Our receptionist in Castellon de la Plana told us about the problem of gypsies [oooops! sorry! - but they are known as “gitanos” in
Spain] stealing from their yard. To protect the yard they bought a guard dog. The gypsies stole the dog
December 04 Haiphong, North Vietnam
postscript - ten years later: in the small town of bac kan, 100 miles north of hanoi, very few dogs are chained up. i have never been to dodge city but i now live in dog city. dogs are everywhere and are mostly well behaved if you exclude dozing in the middle of the road and a lot of "doggy fashion." i did see a man with a blowtorch preparing pooch for market. glad to report that pooch was not alive at this point.
Cho Con
”Con cho” means dog – and many westerners seem to be fascinated/horrified by the locals feasting on Pooch and Rover
Like many Vietnamese words, cho has various meanings, depending on the tonality. This cho is market and “Cho Con” is “small market.” And in the small market is all the usual produce: fruit, vegetables, meat, flies, gasping fish, more flies and chickens.
My grandfather
had a strong pair of hands. His chickens had a good life and when their time was up, they hardly knew a thing – a quick twist of the neck and they were in chicken afterlife. He then hung them to let the blood drip.
Here, they cannot be wasting time and effort with wringing necks – they just slit the chicken’s throat and drip the blood into a bowl. Needless to say, the chicken is still alive. Poultry comes to market on theback of 100cc motorcycles, the unlucky ones with their heads against the exhaust pipe.
Today I discovered yet another reason not to be reincarnated as a chicken: Animals in markets are sold by weight. When there are no customers nearby, the vendor forces large pieces of vegetable down the animal’s throat.
STOP PRESS !
MASS ANIMAL SUICIDE IN KALIMANTAN
MAY 2006
“Unprecedented,” is how one monk described the suicide of a flock of chickens on the morning of a major Buddhist celebration.
MAY 1980 I am in la casa Burgos Mejia watching a repeat of Kung Fu. David Carradine is Grasshopper, a Buddhist monk wandering 19
th century USA for reasons best known to the producers of the series. He is trapped in a mine. A scorpion is on his chest. He protects the scorpion from falling stones. The scorpion finds a way out and Grasshopper lives to star in the next episode. The one thing that most westerners know about Buddhism is that you must not take life. I fall short when invaded by cockroaches or mosquitoes, but I don’t claim to be an Enlightened One.
MAY 2006 again So I can only assume that a flock of chickens voluntarily plucked each other and then jumped into a cooking pot. Now, the good Buddhists of Samarinda, East Kalimantan, could not be held responsible; maybe the chickens preferred to sacrifice themselves than end up on a Christian or Muslim plate. But as they were in the pot already, there was no reason not to add some spices and cooking sauce and to serve the finished product. As a tribute to these self-sacrificing chickens, the vast majority of Samarinda Buddhists stuffed themselves with chicken. In fact, there were only five of us at the vegetarian table.
NIRVANA NO NETWORK SIGNAL Another surprising aspect of Buddhism here in Samarinda is the new method of directly contacting Nirvana. You can see any number of people at the Vihara attempting to contact the enlightened ones by cellphone. A novel idea. All those years of meditation and following the middle path with pure deeds and thoughts… what a waste of time and effort! All you have to do is pick up your shiny state-of the-art mobile phone and get a direct line to Nirvana. If there is no answer you can always sms and wait until a Buddha has time to reply.
post script Bac Kan, North Vietnam, 2013
JUST WHEN YOU THOUGHT IT COULDN’T GET MUCH WORSE, IT DOES
People understandably choose to buy fresh fish. People understandably cannot always afford to buy the whole fish when it is a big creature up to 5 kilos.
Say how much you want and they will cut off the appropriate amount. The fish is still alive and remains so until someone buys the part with the head or nature takes its course.
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