{"id":526,"date":"2010-02-05T19:40:28","date_gmt":"2010-02-06T00:40:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hilltribeart.com\/wordpress\/?p=526"},"modified":"2014-04-05T19:42:46","modified_gmt":"2014-04-06T00:42:46","slug":"the-first-and-last-time-i-try-bat-by-zall-age-13","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/hilltribeart.com\/wordpress\/?p=526","title":{"rendered":"The First (and Last) Time I Try Bat (by Zall – age 13)"},"content":{"rendered":"

The First (and Last) Time I Try Bat (<\/b>by Zall – age 13)<\/b><\/h1>\n

Our family rule is that if you ever are offered a strange food, you have to try it once. You don\u2019t have to eat it ever again, but you have to try it once.\u00a0 To complete this, you must chew and swallow the \u201cfood\u201d (sometimes it\u2019s hardly food) without puking. As you can imagine sometimes this leads to some pretty gnarly things\u2026<\/p>\n

It was in Xam Tai, a small town, and four hours from the city of Xam Neua when the opportunity presented itself.\u00a0 Mai, our translator and friend, looked up at us with a raised eyebrow and three small, dead fruit bats in her hands.\u00a0 \u201cAre you sure?\u201d she questioned with an edge of curiosity in her voice.\u00a0 The rules could not be broken, so we nodded slowly.\u00a0 You can never pass up a chance like this.\u00a0 If you didn\u2019t eat it, thirty years from now you may regret passing up the only occasion to try bat.\u00a0 Mai turned and shrugged her shoulders.\u00a0 \u201cI will prepare this for dinner.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Zall<\/a>

Zall pops his first, and last, bite of bat into his mouth \u2013 see the batburger?<\/p><\/div>\n

At five-thirty we walked to Mai\u2019s family\u2019s house.\u00a0 After an hour or so of playing Frisbee with her son, it was time for dinner.\u00a0 Two steaming plates came out from under the fire pit; one was a laap (a delicious traditional Laos dish of minced pork, banana leaf, lime, and spices), and the other was steamed, fresh greens.\u00a0 Then the third dish came out from the flames.\u00a0 No steam rose from this one.\u00a0 Mai put the dish on the table and my stomach turned upside down.\u00a0 On the plate was a heaping patty of bat: meat, fur, bones, innards, and all.\u00a0 It looked like someone had put the animals in a giant blender.\u00a0 I welcome you to the reality of locally-prepared cooked bat.<\/p>\n

I could tell my whole family had the same thoughts because the color drained from their faces.\u00a0 Mai took a fingerful of sticky rice and casually put a big hunk of the dead wad in her mouth, not noticing our obvious distrust of the pile in front of us.\u00a0 I had no choice.\u00a0 I\u2019d be breaking our family code.\u00a0 I grabbed the biggest chunk of sticky rice I could and loaded some of the furry lump into the hole I\u2019d created in the rice.\u00a0 To top it off, I put a pinch of ginger on top to cover the flavor.\u00a0 My plan worked\u2026 kind of.<\/p>\n

\"Mai\u2019s<\/a>

Mai\u2019s son enjoying his favorite chicken parts \u2013 the eyeballs and tongue.<\/p><\/div>\n

I dropped the ball of ingredients into my mouth.\u00a0 I took a deep breath and bit down.\u00a0 My face distorted as I broke through god knows what part of the bat.\u00a0 The ginger covered up the flavor very well at first.\u00a0 Then the bat flavor kicked in.\u00a0 I could feel my face go white.\u00a0 The flavor was fetid \u2013 a strong, rancid gray flavor that overpowered my mouth, my nose, my brain.\u00a0 It swept through my body like a repulsive, vomitous perfume.\u00a0 My gag reflex triggered but I held in the \u201cfood.\u201d\u00a0 I took one long shuddering breath and swallowed, choking on a rib bone.\u00a0 A wave of relief flooded my body.\u00a0 I quickly shoved more rice into my mouth and looked up at my parents and said with my eyes, \u201cThat\u2019s definitely the last time I try bat.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The First (and Last) Time I Try Bat (by Zall – age 13) Our family rule is that if you ever are offered a strange food, you have to try it once. You don\u2019t have to eat it ever again, … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/hilltribeart.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/526"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/hilltribeart.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/hilltribeart.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/hilltribeart.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/hilltribeart.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=526"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/hilltribeart.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/526\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":527,"href":"http:\/\/hilltribeart.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/526\/revisions\/527"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/hilltribeart.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=526"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/hilltribeart.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=526"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/hilltribeart.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=526"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}