Asian Shorts

2 COW SAUCE

2 COW SAUCE

by Owen Jones

Sometimes, I have to go to Vientiane, the capital city of Laos, in order to renew my visa for Thailand. This only happens when Lloyds TSB fails to send enough of my money over in time to qualify for a twelve-month visa extension. It should not happen often, but this was my eighth trip in as many years.

Laos is not that far from our home, but getting a visa is an arduous journey that takes about three days. In fact, our village is less than a hundred kilometres from the Laos border, but foreigners (non Thai or Lao citizens) may not cross there. We have to go over the Friendship Bridge at Nong Khai.

Now, to get to the Friendship Bridge, I have to go seventy-five kilometres in the opposite direction, southwest, to get a bus, then that takes us three hundred and fifty kilometres northeast. However, most of the journey is slow through the mountains, so if you have a bad back, the swaying and bouncing of the bus is quite painful.

The last time that my wife and I had to go, we had a few days to spare, so we stopped off at Udon Thani to visit some friends. Udon Thani is only an hour from the Lao border, so it is an excellent resting point where the aching back can recover.

Our friend, Ayr, is from that area, north Isaan and is very proud of the local cuisine, which has a reputation elsewhere in Thailand for being hot and, shall we say, a little ‘unusual’.

We stayed with Ayr for a few days and every day she would cook us something different - not only once a day, but three or four times a day. Sometimes she sent out for more food too.

My wife used to live with Ayr before we got married and I got the impression that when not working or sleeping, they must have been eating or talking the whole time!

Sometimes, I would go to bed or sit in the garden with my laptop and leave them to it. I really enjoyed watching my wife reminisce with her old friend, whom she now saw less than once a year.

At our home, my wife and I usually ate the same sort of food, but I can always tell when she is going to treat herself to something special because I get a plate of Western food like a steak, kebabs or really nice sandwiches. I love this food but my wife does not.

If she eats alone in the garden, then I know better than to ask what it is, although it will be nothing more than bala (rotten fish), som tam (red hot papaya salad) or chickens’ feet. She knows that they are not for me and I know that she doesn’t like the smell of beef.

On the last evening before we had to go to Vientiane, I went to bed early and left the ladies to it. However, I couldn’t sleep, so I got up, dressed and went back to join them.

They were sitting on the floor, Thai style, watching TV, surrounded by seven or eight bowls of food, as I had imagined they would be, so I went to the fridge, took out a beer and sat with them.

Ayr fetched me a stick of French bread that they had bought earlier and my wife pointed me at a few bowls of food and sauce she knew I could eat. She normally never offered me those sauces that she knew were too hot or too non-western for my palate.

When I dipped the end of my bread in one of the nearest sauces to me, Ayr looked at me and then at my wife and smiled. I interpreted this to mean that it was hot, but I was determined to carry on.

“This sauce is lovely!” I declared, “What is it?”

My wife looked at me: “It’s grass from a dead cow’s bum… Uh, cow poo! But don’t worry, it’s not dirty, it has never fallen on the ground.”

Owen Jones writes in many genre which you can discover on his here: h***:://owencerijones.com . His flagship series ‘Behind The Smile ~ The Story of Lek, A Bar Girl in Pattaya’ is here: h***:://behind-the-smile.org

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