Travelling through the rice fields of Isaan, and my wife is keen to point out items of interest, none of which I can look at because I am concentrating on the road ahead. One of her observations is that the farming has become increasingly mechanised, but the number of buffaloes has not decreased.
We consider their likely current utility and arrive at two possibilities:
They are kept so they can get sick; which allows bar girl daughters to plead for cash to pay for “our sick buffalo” from foreign customers, without actually lying.
People eat them.
The latter theory is supported at a roadside market where I am offered a two for one bargain on buffalo ears.
Then a bulk discount on dried buffalo hide strips, with no extra charge for the hairy bits.
Or I could save myself all the culinary challenges and just buy some lovely buffalo soup (left of photo).
So the next time a bar girl requests money for the sick family buffalo, just tell her to have it slaughtered and offer to buy the ears. She’ll love you long time for such a gesture.
We are now in Ubon Ratchathani and checked into a 400 baht a night room (the rack rate is 7 million baht, genuinej). It’s clean and quiet and, most importantly, has wi-fi. She who must be obeyed has gone shopping with her mother and I have just had a pleasant doze. Life is acceptable.
Comments 🔗
2010-07-25| Barry saysOld Crutch in his Postscript column in the Bangkok Post mentioned a report in the paper that claimed the number of water buffalo has decreased from 6 million to 1 million since 1980. I wonder who counted them? Someone in an ‘inactive post’, perhaps.
2010-08-12| MeMock saysDefinitely a lot less Buffalos around Ubon then there was 7 years ago when I first visited. In my wife’s village there would have been over 100, now there is less then 20.
Where did you stay in Ubon?
2010-08-12| Spike saysGingtawan Mansion. Good news: 400 baht a night for a good room. Not so good news, 100 metres from my mother-in-laws house.