The Slaughter of a Pig in Laos

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Living at a guesthouse, I’ve gotten the chance to meet a variety of people from around the world, some delightful, some strange, most interesting. Generally, I enjoy watching them ask the owner odd questions.

For instance, a young French woman the other day was very concerned about the presence of snakes.

“Are there any snakes around here? I’m really afraid of snakes. Actually I look for them everywhere I go, and I imagine everything to be a snake. But when I actually see one I’m quite relieved because I know where it is.”

I tried to calm her fears, “No, I’ve only seen one snake in the 9 months total I’ve spent here, I wouldn’t worry about it.”

“Don’t worry, if there were any snakes, all the locals would have already caught them and ate them,” Peter, the owner responded.

“Well, OK, but I’ll still keep my eye out. I think there may be many snakes around here. When I lived in Hong Kong I had a home in the country, just full of snakes. Every time I opened a room, there’d be a snake. There’d be snakes in the bed, snakes in the dryer, snakes in the dishwasher, even snakes in the oven. One time I pre-heated the oven, opened it to put in a cake, and a half-baked snake popped out.”

Another lady who’d been told she’d have to find another room that night, as her room was reserved, replied:

“Well, I think I’ve found a suitable guesthouse but I’m a bit worried about the rooster. I saw a rooster, walking just next to the guesthouse. When will the rooster crow? If it crows in the morning that’s fine but what if it crows at night? Or in the very early morning? What if it crows when I‘m trying to get to sleep?”

The other morning, I spotted a young Lao man, running from the room of a single, middle-aged British woman, shoes in hand, around 6 AM. It is not uncommon for locals and tourists to hook-up, though generally it’s the opposite way around, with foreign men with local women. And if the police take notice, those involved can get in trouble, with a fine, or worse, jail, as it is actually illegal. That rule is among ten posted on the wall of every guesthouse room in town. It is enforced to varying degrees depending on whom you ask.

I’ve been teaching English to two little girls who I became friendly with when I worked here at a bar previously. They live just next to the bar so they always came in to play. In turn, they are teaching me Lao. We were going through a book of simple vocabulary words, in English and Lao, and came upon the word peanut. Why this word was considered an important vocabulary word I don’t know. But there are many words that are really hard for Lao people to say in English, as is true vice versa in Lao. This was one of them. The little girls kept repeatedly saying, “penis”. I finally told them what a penis was compared to a peanut. I don’t think they understood which was probably for the best. But I had them try to say the two different words about twenty times each to hear the difference. A few minutes later I’d moved on to a new word with the littlest girl, and heard her older sister, riding her bike around the house in the background, singing, “Penis, Penis, Penis, Penis.”

A few weeks ago, my friend Gabriel bought some inner tubes from a Chinese truck repair shop on the outskirts of town, for floating down the Nam Khan River. The Mekong River, the other river that runs through town, is definitely not clean enough for swimming. Brown and murky, shit runs in it all the way down from China. The Nam Khan on the other hand, only has shit running down it from Laos. It’s not pristine, due to the multiple sewage streams that I’ve noticed possibly running in to it, but it sure feels that way when you’re swimming in it. So we walked up to the bamboo bridge, a tiny swaying bridge only strong enough for walking across, and taken down each year as the river rises during the rainy season. Then we floated downriver about five minutes, paddling over to hop out on the side opposite town. Right now, it’s the dry season and the river is quite low, so we had to climb about five minutes up a steep dirt hill to get up to the main dirt road on that side of the river.

We began walking along the roads with our tubes, just a dirt track really, through quiet Lao neighborhoods. Then we came upon the Butcher shop, a brand new place, the first foreign meat seller in town. The German owner married a Lao-German woman, and had all his modern butcher equipment shipped to Luang Prabang from Germany, as there is no such equipment in Laos. I was very curious to check this new place out, and so we walked past a small sign in Lao, down his dirt driveway, to his shop and butchering room.

The butcher's Lao-German wife spoke English and showed me the small fridge where they sell their homemade pork sausage and salamis and other prepared meats. In the room next door, the doors to the outside were open, and peeking inside we saw three young Lao men stripping intestines of their shit, squeezing the shit out from inside the intestines. The room they worked in had a big metal table, a big metal tub filled with bloody water, hooks coming down from the ceiling and a giant freezer in the rear with a door, which when opened, we could see contained six-foot hanging pig carcasses. We were fascinated by only this, with no idea what was about to occur.

The German butcher, serious and sure, walked out of the butcher room, across the small courtyard and in to a white picket-fenced stall. Out came the piercing screeching noises of a pig. A moment later, out come the butcher leading a 300 lb pig, a string tied to his back foot. What happened next was fast and efficient. The butcher pulled out an air gun and held it upon the pigs forehead. The pig registered a look of shock, its eyes rolled back in its head and it collapsed, its four legs sliding out from under it. The butcher and his assistants, including his slight wife, quickly lowered the pig to its side and cut its throat with a sharp knife. Thick, coagulated blood began spurting out, about two gallons of it within five seconds. Most of the blood was caught in a round metal bowl, though quite a bit covered the floor and all those attending. Then the butcher swiftly cut the area in front of the pigs achilles heels, sticking hooks through these strong spaces. He pushed a lever and a larger hook pulled the pig up so it was hanging in the air. When the pig was above a table, the butcher took the hook off the animal’s heels and the shaving began. Bowls of scalding hot water, already prepared, were repeatedly dumped over the pig’s skin, while the butcher and all his assistants went to work shaving the pig clean. The workers used big metal bell-shaped objects, easy to hold, with razor-sharp edges. They ripped out his toenails with the hook end of these objects. Within five minutes they had finished and the pig ceased to look like a pig. He now looked like plastic.

The butcher reattached the hook, hoisting the pig up in to the air so it was hanging straight down by its heels. Swiftly, the butcher pulled out a blow torch and completely cleansed the carcass with fire within thirty seconds. He then took a few seconds to sharpen a long carving knife, and then he began swiftly cutting in to the center of the pig’s chest. Within a minute he had cut the pig entirely down the center and was pulling out 10 lbs of intestines, a giant red liver, big kidneys, a tiny heart and a miniscule brain. He threw all the insides in to the big tank of bloody water, cut off the pig’s ears, and with a few chops, cut the pig entirely in to two halves. He then grabbed a few smaller hooks, and pulled out set after set of ears from the bloody tank, until he had a morbid necklace of 8 pigs ears. This, along with a hook filled with the other insides, apart from the intestines, he brought in to the big cooler, and hung along the back wall, alongside many other interior pig-parts. The assistants were already busy cleaning the pig’s intestines.

We had stood just outside the doors of the room, watching as this whole fast event played out, although the butcher’s wife had said we could come inside and watch. Seeing as everyone inside was coated in blood, we were happy to watch from outside. We were not the only spectators as two middle-aged Lao women were also enjoying the show. Enjoying might be the wrong word. It was more like shock and transfixion.

The two halves of the pig were then individually lifted by three men and hung inside the meat cooler. At this point we thanked the butcher and his crew for letting us watch and continued on down the street, walking up along the river, until we reached the Old Bridge, exclaiming all the way at the chances of stumbling upon a pig slaughter on a weekday afternoon!

Wide and strong enough only for motorbikes, bicycles and pedestrians, this was the only bridge to cross the river until cars became common here. Then, a new bridge was built further down river to accommodate vehicles. We climbed down the steep bank, walked through a local garden, and hopped in to the river below the bridge, where teenage boys were already swimming, jumping from a big rock. The current allowed us a peaceful ride downriver with stunning views of lush mountains spotted by only a few local homes and gardens.

This jump off point allowed us 15 pleasant minutes of floating before we arrived at the junction where the Nam Khan meets the Mekong River, and we climbed out of the river and walked back up the steep dirt bank to the street. The locals, when necessary, and it often is necessary, bathe, wash dishes, clean clothes, brush their teeth, fish and do everything else in the Mekong. The foreigner, since it is not necessary, would really do better not to tube in to the Mekong River, a very different consistency and color than the water in the Nam Khan.

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Photos

VIew of the Mekong River
near where it meets the Nam Khan

A Restored French Colonial Building
Now the French Cultural Institute

Comments

[Jamie]

Becoming a Vegetarian...Again
Seriously Britt, great description so glad I don't do the bacon thing...thinking about chicken and steak next!!!