Food in Asia
Cambodia
Deep-fried spiders
A traditional snack in Cambodia is fried insects. Anything goes but big hairy spiders seem extraordinary popular. The small village of Skun on the highway 6A, between Phnom Penh and Siem Reap, is renowned for their deep-fried tarantulas, along with grasshoppers, crickets and beetles. The place has become so popular that even tour buses stop here now. So how does a tarantula tastes like? The hairy legs are just crispy, but the big abdomen is full of gooey, yummy guts. Just squeeze and enjoy.
Cam
Donkey meat is considered a delicacy by the Chinese and is sold in dedicated donkey restaurants, which are easy recognised by the donkeys on their signs. The most popular dish is probably the "donkey burger", a bread with chopped donkey stuffing that is sold for a few kuais. Chinese men though tend to go for a bit more delicate part of the donkey, namely the penis. The monster will be sliced into mouth fitting pieces and served on a plate. The slices are sometimes referred to as "donkey coin money". It can be a bit pricy, but luckily you don't have to buy the whole willy.
We have of course tried it and can only... eh, recommend it. Bon appetit!
We have of course tried it and can only... eh, recommend it. Bon appetit!
Small food stalls fill the narrow so-called "snack alley" that springs of the stopping street of Wangfujing. Here you find the usual snacks that Chinese just love, like BBQ sticks, pig stomach and candied fruit, but the main attraction are the exotic sticks. We are talking insects, worms and, even weirder, seahorses and starfish. The big black scorpions go down well, but we did not try the dry-looking starfish!!!
The Lao people eat pretty much anything, so why not cockroaches? They are plentiful, eating them will bring down the numbers, and you can probably get used to the gooey bits that explode in your month when chewing them.
It seems that anything that can be shot down with a slingshot is considered a delicacy in Laos. Most local markets in the northern Laos have a few vendors selling freshly killed jungle animals, like squirrels, forest rats, mouse deers and other jungle rodents along with smoked bats and colorful birds. There might even be a few live animals hidden in a basket somewhere. The hunters normally use either a sling shot or a home-made shotgun that use ammo made of UXO (unexploded ordnance), war leftovers from the heaving bombing of Laos during the Vietnam War. Though jungle meat is a part of Lao food culture for some ethnic minorities, we strongly discourage you to try it.
If you like monkeys, this might not be for you... but one of the main meat sources for indigenous groups throughout Sarawak is monkey. There are many different species (nine to more precise) to choose from for a traditional jungle meal, but it really depends on what the hunters catch. They can prepare it in many ways, and each way taste unique - yes, even delicious. If in a small village, keep in mind that dinner is whatever the hunters catch, and in Borneo there are a lot of options of things to hunt!
Do not eat shark fin soup... your dick will fall off!!!
No seriously, the shark fishing industry is totally unsustainable, so please just say no.
No seriously, the shark fishing industry is totally unsustainable, so please just say no.
Eggs are always a popular snack in Asia, especially in Northern Vietnam. More desired than ordinary eggs, are the lightly blue eggs with nearly-developed embryo inside, so-called hột vịt lộn. Normally it is duck eggs that are half-hatched, i.e. fertilized but only partway incubated. Some have embryos that are in a very early stage, while others have almost fully developed embryos with feathers, soft bones and beak. Though the taste is not very different from an ordinary egg, the texture might put you off.
In Cambodia it is possible to have your pizza served "happy". It is an unique Cambodian cuisine and means your ordinary pizza will be garnisheed with a bit - sometimes a lot - of "happy herbs". Yes, this means ganja/marijuana/pot/weed, whatever you call it. In the good old days (1990s) when Cambodia was the Wild East every pizza place served happy pizzas, but nowadays due to Cambodia's more strict drug policy (yes, "happy herbs" are also illegal in Cambodia) "happy" might only be a buzz word on the menu used instead of "delicious" or "yummy". So if you don't want to have anything to do with drugs omit "happy" food – and if you do want to get stoned, ask whether "happy" really is that happy. Other food items can of course also be upgraded to "happy" like the equal famous happy shake.
Vietnam
Mekong Market
Vinh Long
The Mekong Delta is where the Mekong River flows into the sea through a maze of side rivers. It is the most fertile region in Vietnam and the relative small area manage to produce half of Vietnam's rice production along with a overwhelming range of vegetables and exotic fruits. The markets in Mekong are therefor packed with colorful fruits like rambutan, dragon fruit, mangosteen and of course the smelly pointy durian. But the people in the Mekong are also known for their taste for, well, pretty much anything. Frogs, snails, turtles, rats, snakes, scorpions, you name it. If they can catch it, they eat it. So the local market in the trading town of Vinh Long can have the feeling of a zoo but don't be fooled, everything here are for consumption.
There are restaurants in Vietnam that specialized in snake meat. Here you can pick your own snake from a cage. The handler will then bring the snake alive to your table, smack it in the head and slice it open. The blood will be drained into a glass with rice wine and then served to you, along with the heart which will still be pumping. The rest of the snake will be brought to kitchen, where it will turn into several snake dishes, like spine soup and snake skin cracklings. Every single bit of the snake is used and it is believed that each part have some health improvement properties, like eating the pumping heart will give strong sexual powers.
Vietnam is a great place to try some new food sources. Either unusual animals, or just unusual parts of animals - like uterus of pig.
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