Water-Buffalo

This animal, Bubalis Bubalis, is greatly prized in Laos, both for the work it does and the meat which it provides. Its Lao name is kuai. A drawing of one appears at the top of the next page.

Water-buffalo meat may be consumed raw (in a lap, as in), dried (sin kuai haeng), or cooked in various ways. Those who are in a position to make the comparison often declare it to be as good as beef (which is hardly known at all in Laos, although there was an experimental station for rearing cows and bulls, in the early 1970s, in the northern part of the Plain of Vientiane).