Understanding a culture through food

Shimmering heat makes the black tar ahead of me appear wet, as if it too is slicked in a permanent layer of salty sweat. All the gauges on my motorbike have been snapped off so I’m not sure how fast I’m going or how much fuel I have left. I like it better this way. It makes me feel like a maverick, a renegade.

In the straw-coloured rice fields ahead a small group of farmers hand-thresh the last of their crop. I stop to offer them a cigarette and I’m greeted with warm smiles and the ubiquitous Lao greeting of ‘sabaidee’. Curious to try my hand at their work I take some rice and beat it against the ground as I have watched them do. My failed attempts at what is for them the easiest of tasks soon generates much laughter and I am invited to join them for lunch.

Sitting in the shade of a thatched-grass hut I watch as small fish are pulled from a net-covered bucket and skewered - still alive - on thin wooden sticks. The fish are barbequed over a small coal fire while bowls of crushed eggplant, chilis, and fried green vegetables are laid out beside a large woven basket of ‘sticky rice’.

We eat with our hands from communal plates and everything is shared. Rice is dipped into the spicy eggplant paste and fish are eaten straight from their skewers. From his pocket one of the men produces a small plastic bag filled with a translucent liquid. A cup made from the bottom half of a plastic water bottle is also presented and I am offered to be the first to drink. A local spirit made from fermented rice, it tastes of cheap vodka and I drink it quickly.

Although a language barrier prevents us from conversing in any detail I feel our shared meal has given me a greater appreciation of these people’s lives. Perhaps it is the effects of numerous cups of the potent ‘Lao Lao’ whiskey, but I feel something important in the way these people eat together. There are no individual cups, plates or bowls and all food is shared equally. Lunch is always taken together - in the fields that they work collectively. It may not always be an easy life, but the peacefulness and sense of community that it offered had become a part of who these people are.

From the simple offering of a cigarette and my unsuccessful attempt to thresh their rice I had been welcomed with a warmth that I had rarely felt at home. Taking some mandarins from my backpack I thanked them for their kindness and returned to my weathered motorbike. Ahead of me the jungle-covered mountains of the Golden Triangle await.