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’t have to eat it ever again, but you have to try it once.  To complete this, you must chew and swallow the “food” (sometimes it’s hardly food) without puking. As you can imagine sometimes this leads to some pretty gnarly things…

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

Zall pops his first, and last, bite of bat into his mouth – see the batburger?

At five-thirty we walked to Mai’s family’s house.  After an hour or so of playing Frisbee with her son, it was time for dinner.  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.  Then the third dish came out from the flames.  No steam rose from this one.  Mai put the dish on the table and my stomach turned upside down.  On the plate was a heaping patty of bat: meat, fur, bones, innards, and all.  It looked like someone had put the animals in a giant blender.  I welcome you to the reality of locally-prepared cooked bat.

I could tell my whole family had the same thoughts because the color drained from their faces.  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.  I had no choice.  I’d be breaking our family code.  I grabbed the biggest chunk of sticky rice I could and loaded some of the furry lump into the hole I’d created in the rice.  To top it off, I put a pinch of ginger on top to cover the flavor.  My plan worked… kind of.

Mai’s son enjoying his favorite chicken parts – the eyeballs and tongue.

I dropped the ball of ingredients into my mouth.  I took a deep breath and bit down.  My face distorted as I broke through god knows what part of the bat.  The ginger covered up the flavor very well at first.  Then the bat flavor kicked in.  I could feel my face go white.  The flavor was fetid – a strong, rancid gray flavor that overpowered my mouth, my nose, my brain.  It swept through my body like a repulsive, vomitous perfume.  My gag reflex triggered but I held in the “food.”  I took one long shuddering breath and swallowed, choking on a rib bone.  A wave of relief flooded my body.  I quickly shoved more rice into my mouth and looked up at my parents and said with my eyes, “That’s definitely the last time I try bat.”