A stop for a new passenger

Around 3pm our guide asked if we would mind stopping so the captain could pick up "a pig". Needless to say this request seemed like the beginning of another photo and blog opportunity...It was raining at this point and our boat slowed or idled while a very small local fishing type boat rowed by one man slowly made his way from shore, upstream to our location. His boat had an outboard but we were told he had no gas. In the meantime, the women on our boat had brought out a large old fashioned scale and a huge pot about 3 feet in diameter. The fisherman (hunter?) pulled alongside and handed up not a pig, but the haunch of a wild boar. It was dutifully weighed (14 kilos) and inspected- primarily by pulling on the hairs on the skin and looking at the intersection of the skin and meat. I later was told they are trying to determine if the villagers are telling the truth about whether they just shot the boar this morning, or if they have put "medicine" on it to make it seemed fresher than it is. Anyhow, kip and one soft drink were handed over and each boat respectively took off. Everyone was jolly on our boat a the economics involved were the equivalent of winning the lottery. The boar was purchased for a kg and will be cut up and sold for 100% more. I asked how they had known there happened to be boar for sale as there is no cell service here and no one on the shore had been holding up a "Boar for sale" sign. Apparently all"slow" boats going up the Mekong look the same, ie: private like this one or the public transport boat. People wanting to get on simply wait on the shore and flag it down to stop. Our captain saw the guy waving and assumed he just wanted to be picked up, but then the guy picked up the boar leg and was waving it in the air (the universal sign for a sale"....I wonder what will be for lunch today?