Food for the adventurous (w/ video)

                               Squid tentacles on sticks at the Phuket weekend night market

Water beetles, snakes, crocodiles, balut (google it), crickets. Last night I added two more things to the tally of what I suppose people would call "weird food" I've eaten. A group of seven of us went to the weekend night market in Phuket - all with different ideas of what we wanted to see/ do. The market, in Phuket Town, is rather large - big enough to get lost in - and has everything you could want - clothes, rip-off DVDs and BluRay discs, knick knacks. But I was here for one thing - the food. Among more standard fare such as fish cakes, fried chicken, and cakes (which were all super good and cheap) and hiding in plain sight was a man in a plain, nondescript stall, wearing a surgical mask flash frying pre-cooked bugs and selling them for 20 baht. I wandered (wongdered) along the rows of food vendors with a friend several times looking for interesting food to try and I completely walked past this guy without noticing. (Maybe I should work on my observation skills). The smell and colours and cooking techniques of the stall holders was immense - almost an assault on your senses...but in a good way. This is what I came here for. At this stage I was a bit underwhelmed by the normalness (to me) of most of the food. For the record I had fish cakes, chicken on a stick, sticky rice, pearl tea and a donut filled with apple jelly. But I was left with a bug-shaped hole in my stomach which needed filling.

It wasn't until we had met up with the rest of the group (we decided to meet near the entrance at a certain time) that someone mentioned seeing the bugs. Perfect. Without hesitation Canadian Eric and instantly put our hands up as volunteers.

Piles of giant water bugs, grasshoppers, crickets and silk worms sat pre-cooked on metal trays ready for the eating. The stallholder still had quite a lot of each, so I'm not sure if he's really the most popular guy in the food hall. Maybe he's just that weird guy that wears a surgical mask and sells bugs every weekend. I don't know. After some consideration Eric and I, with some input from the rest of the group, decided on the silk worms and one giant water bug each. (Eric had said his dad got bitten by one in Canada once so this was kind of payback for that. Yeah, that THAT water bugs.) Twenty baht got us about 100 grams of silk worms and I think it was 20B each for the water bugs.

Now, I know what you're probably thinking - "Why the fudge would he eat that? He so cray!" (because you're gangsta like that.)
But you'd be wrong. I'm not that cray.
If you think about it, people wouldn't eat these kinds of things if it was bad for you. Its just about getting over that mental barrier which is the most difficult bit.
And, pound for pound, insects probably have more protein than some meat.

Standing in front of the stall, the consumption began.

Now even though you're a bit grossed out I know you want to know what it tastes like. The silk worms were firmer than you'd think they'd be and quite filling. The best thing I can think of to describe the texture of them is like eating a cooked fish egg sack, but that's probably not the most relateable things to compare it too. I suppose spongy is the right word. They tasted sort of nutty, and salty. The salt probably coming from what it was cooked in and mixed with. The water bug, which actually look strikingly like a giant cockroach was a bit different. It was clearly an insect - legs, wings, head. At least you could imagine the worms to be something else if that helped you put your mind at ease. They're just oval shaped.

We didn't get a lesson in how to eat a giant water bug, but I remember what my dad taught me about eating water beetles and ripped off the head to pull out most of the guts, but the head just came off. There was nothing left to do but put the whole thing down the hatch. It was a mouthful. A bit of chewing and paste eases itself out of the body. Its quite salty too, again, probably from what its cooked it. Taking another leaf out of the water beetle consumption guide I spat out the mangled, yet still recognisable, bug after I had extracted what was inside.

This is the kind of thing I came to South East Asia for. Mission accomplished.
       

Silk worms

                                       

Giant water bugs

The album:

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10151602623765204.856210.830635203&type=1&l=abf64a9563

Read More

An afternoon with a rather sizeable Buddha

In the south of Phuket, Thailand sits a cross-legged and sleepy looking Buddha looking out over the island. He is under construction at the moment, so its kind of like visiting a construction site - only a bit more spiritual. A roundtrip from Patong costs about 1000B in a taxi which isn't too bad if you go with others. Try and barter with the drivers on the street if you like, but 1000B seems to be the going rate. We only managed to shave of 50B from the fare - a seemingly hollow victory because they wouldn't go less than 900B. On an old laminated piece of card are popular tourist destinations including the go-kart track, shooting range, zoo, big buddha and a jewellery store. Just point and you're on your way. On the way your driver will take you to some other places on the card in the hopes you'll succumb to your spontaneous side and want to do these things. I suppose they get extra baht if they take people to do these activities.

Read More

So this one time, in Thailand...

They filmed part of James Bond: The Man with the Golden Gun in Thailand 38 years ago and its still a major tourist attraction. James Bond Island (real name Ko Tapu) forms the crux of many day trips through Phang Nga Bay which leave from Ao Po on the west side of Phuket, Thailand. Perhaps the significance was lost on me, but I don't understand the popularity of this place. The island in itself is what you see in these photos. Its small, but I guess it has a weird shape to it - getting narrower near the base. What you probably don't see in the many photos tourists take of themselves - either posing and pretending to be James Bond (in the film played by Roger Moore) or doing the whole forced perspective thing where it looks like you're pushing the island or holding it up - is the market selling knick-knacks, an ice cream and soft drink vendor and a well established port behind them.

Perhaps the significance is lost on me because 1), I wasn't even alive in 1974 and b) I haven't seen the movie. Perhaps the middle-aged tourists come to this place to fan-girl over Roger Moore in the same way that I would visit say, the set of the Lord of the Rings.

In any case, this may well be the best case of milking something I've ever seen. But hey, if it keeps bringing the baht then why not?

Have you been to James Bond Island? What did you think?

A still image from James Bond: The Man With the Golden Gun in 1974. James Bond Island, left, in Phang Nga, Phuket, Thailand is still a major tourist attraction 38 years later. 

Me not quite ready for the inevitable tourist photo with James Bond Island. 

More photos from the trip in the snapshot page. The day trip was booked through my hostel and cost 1200B (about $48NZD) which included transfers from the hostel, buffet lunch on board and canoeing.

Read More

Welcome to Thailand

I arrive in Phuket under the cover of darkness. My immediate surroundings masked by the night. It's warm. 29 degrees, according to the captain. Muggy,too. I step out of the arrivals area and I'm immediately approached by people offering me a taxi to where I need to go. This was the part I feared the most - fresh off the plane and prime for the ripping off. I get rushed off into a taxi, but God knows whether the driver is taking me where I need to go. Its quite a long trip from the airport, about 45 minutes, mostly along straight highways. Patches of nothing much but road, my driver and the taxi unnerve me a little, but soon we make it back to civilisation. We pass temples and people balanced sometimes precariously on mopeds going the same speed as us. You can tell they've done this before. We reach the city limits of pa tong beach and a sign tells us to slow down as we wind our way through the streets. It seems fairly built up from what I can see in the dark and from out the window. There's a lot more people now. More foreigners. We must be close. Everything still open at 10.30 at night - markets, bars (discotheques) with loud music. Not really ideal after a long flight, but promising for the days ahead. It is only Tuesday after all.

Read More