The Jakarta Post
Please Update your browser
Your browser is out of date, and may not be compatible with our website. A list of the most popular web browsers can be found below.
Just click on the icons to get to the download page.
Popular Reads
Top Results
No results found. Please check your search term and try again
Can't find what you're looking for?
View all search results
Popular Reads
Top Results
No results found. Please check your search term and try again
Can't find what you're looking for?
View all search results‘I’ll eat any dog except my own’: Indonesia wrestles with canine culinary habits
Change text size
Gift Premium Articles
to Anyone
Share the best of The Jakarta Post with friends, family, or colleagues. As a subscriber, you can gift 3 to 5 articles each month that anyone can read—no subscription needed!
Tradition?: By some estimates, 7 percent of Indonesians eat dog meat. (Unsplash/Anoir Chafik) (Unsplash/Courtesy of Anoir Chafik)
For many, eating dog meat would be unimaginable, but for those who have done so since childhood, it’s just another meal.
Since he was a child, Simson Sidebang has eaten dog meat.
His hometown has a tradition of slaughtering dogs to eat on certain days, including for New Year celebrations, when villagers combine the dish with a cup or two of tuak, a Batak palm wine.
Simson hails from Paropo, a small village on the shores of Lake Toba, in Dairi regency.
“At the time – I was maybe 6 years old – there was an event in the village where people cooked dog meat to eat together. The first piece of dog I ate was given to me by my father,” the 36-year-old said. His father, Simson said, “loved” dog meat.
"In our village, the weather is cold,” he said, adding that the combination of dog meat and tuak was perfect for warming up the body.
Communal tradition
More from The Weekender
Siapa Anda? Mengapa Anda?
What begins as a small grammatical curiosity becomes a larger question about language, culture and the way we understand ourselves in relation to others - and, ultimately, about what we risk losing in a world increasingly impatient with reflection, ambiguity and the humanities.
A passport to the kingdom of the sick
A breast cancer diagnosis, a journey to the kingdom of the sick and a determination to describe what lies there without metaphor, euphemism or the word “fight.”
The weight of time
Richard Mille’s newest ultralight timepiece pares down haute horlogerie to its mechanical necessities, proving that sophistication often comes from knowing what to leave out.
