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We picked up the dead cow in the 23rd hour of the 16-hour
bus trip.
I had nodded off to sleep. Usually, I can’t sleep on
buses, but it had been a long day and here I was - in a relic
of a bus, on a neglected road in the mountains of northeastern
Laos, with shrill, electrified Thai folk music blaring on
the sound system, surrounded by a group of spitting, card-playing
Chinese businessmen – snoozing away, my mouth gaping
open, totally oblivious.
Every time we stopped, though, I would jerk awake, worried
that we’d reached my destination, Luang Prabang. We were
supposed to get there sometime during the night, but we’d
already had two flat tires and gotten stuck in the mud twice.
I had no idea when we would arrive.
So when I woke to find all the Chinese businessmen racing
off the bus, I assumed we were in Luang Prabang. I grabbed
my bag and ran to the front of the bus. There was one other
English speaker on the bus, a Dutch guy named Richard. He
was sitting in the front to stretch his long, Dutch legs.
“Hey,” he smirked.
“Are we in Luang Prabang?” I asked, trying to stuff
my tattered book-exchange copy of Bastard Out of Carolina
into my overloaded daypack.
“Well, I don’t know where we are, but those Chinese
guys are getting off because of our new passenger.”
He pointed at the seat across the aisle from him.
And there was the dead cow. I stared at it, awestruck.
“Wow,” I thought. “I am going to win every
weird-travel story contest for years to come.”
The bus started up again, minus the Chinese businessmen.
By the time it started to get light and we were near Luang
Prabang, our new friend was emitting quite a musk. I was relieved
when we stopped at a small house about a half hour from Luang
Prabang and the cow was unloaded.
Three men from the bus got to work and began skinning the
cow with machetes they just happened to have on hand, conveniently
enough. They then carved the cow into about 20 pieces. This
was fascinating to watch, since these men were masters, meat
surgeons: their movements were sure and their demeanors calm.
They knew their task was important, but they completed it
without fuss. Or muss. When I try to separate the halves of
prepackaged chicken breasts, I get chicken juice on my clothes,
in my hair, up my nose.
Once the men were done carving, people from the bus began
to step up the pile of meat and select pieces. The first few
were hesitant as they inspected the meat but then gleeful
after they’d selected their pieces. One by one, each
family from the bus got a hunk of meat. The bus driver asked
if I’d like one too, but I declined. As much as I loved
the idea of marching into my guesthouse in Luang Prabang with
a piece of rotting steak in my backpack, it was already full
of cotton fisherman’s pants and ceramic elephants.
The bus driver’s cheerful wife brought out a cooler
for the people to put their meat in until they got to the
final destination, Vientiane. Good idea. There was no ice
in the cooler, but at least people didn’t have to sit
with their free meat in their laps for eight more hours.
The cooler was loaded onto the bus and we got moving again.
It only took about twenty minutes to get to Luang Prabang,
and by eight I was in bed. Visions of rotten sirloin danced
in my head.
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Travel Writers: Moo-ve Over By Sarah Rasmussen
