The 10 Weirdest Creatures We've Eaten (So Far)

Traveling opens the door to so many new experiences. Meeting new people, getting to know new cultures and seeing amazing new places are among the wonders of traveling. One of my favorites, however, is tasting new foods. I love trying strange foods and will hardly ever shy away from new dishes. Ricky, too, is beginning to be a more adventurous eater. Here is a list of 10 of the strangest things we’ve eaten so far. Now just to clarify, we list 10 different creatures, not parts of them. We’ve had cow stomach and duck intestines, but duck and cow aren’t that strange. The following list contains 10 animals that the majority of you probably haven’t tried.

Bugs:

Yes, they taste the way they look.

10. Silkworm

I’ll start with the creepy-crawlies, because, well, they're the worst.. First is silkworm, a popular dish in China. I tried them twice. The first time was disgusting and I couldn’t actually swallow it. The outside of the worm was a sort of chewy/crunchy texture, and when I bit down on it, the goo from the inside flooded my mouth. It was absolutely vile. The flavor was rancid, the texture even worse. I spit it up into a napkin.

The second time was much better. The inside was cooked  better, so it had the texture of a firm tofu. The outside was

chewable, so I could actually swallow it. The flavor was much better than the first time as well. Still, though, silkworm is not a great food, at least for my tastes.

9. Scorpion  

Who decided eating this thing was a good idea?

The scorpions I had were tiny little things, with not much to them. They were cooked on skewers that were almost as big around as they were.  And that’s pretty much it. There wasn’t much flavor, or actual edible stuff. Just a crunchy little tid-bit.

8. Wasp

All I remember thinking as I was about to pop this crunchy morsel into my mouth was this: “It’s looking at me. It can see into my soul.”

I will devour your first born child, with all your hopes and dreams on the side.

And then I ate it, and it popped a little.

7. Grasshopper

By far the worst insect I’ve eaten. First, they were huge. Second, they still had legs.  It took me about 5 minutes to eat one because everything kept getting stuck everywhere. There were legs in my teeth and exoskeleton bits stuck to the back of my throat. It was probably one of the most disgusting eating experiences ever.

10 months later and I'm still finding bits in my teeth.

***Just to sum up my bug-eating: never again. I thought before I started traveling that I would be an insect-eater. The thought didn’t really gross me out, so I figured I’d be ok with it. But it’s one of those things that is cool once for the novelty, but after that it’s just gross.  Bugs are definitely not something I could make a meal out of. But maybe I just haven’t met the right one…***

6. Ostrich

So tall and regal...and tasty.

This is one of my favorites on this list. We were given it raw, and then we cooked it ourselves on a barbecue. Raw, it was red and looked a lot like beef. Cooked, it still retained that beef-like appearance. 

The flavor and texture were delicious. It was tender, and the taste was rich. The Japanese must have eaten this when they discovered umami. 

5. Yak

So, this may not be way out there, because it’s pretty much just a cow dressed as Tina Turner, but we're still guessing that not many of you have had the pleasure—nay! The privilege!—of eating yak.  It is the most divine meat I have ever eaten.

Wear it, eat it. It's multipurpose!

 I had a yak steak and a yak burger in China and I could almost hear a choir of angels singing aloud as I chewed each bite. It was oh-so tender, full of flavor, and seemed to melt in my mouth. Each mouthful was a taste of heaven, and I was close to tears when it was all gone.

4. Dog 

Shame on me for using this picture. 

Not one of my favorite meats, but Ricky will eat it any time he gets a chance, mostly because it means that we’re in a North Korean restaurant, and he has a fascination with North Korea.

We’ve had dog twice, and the second time was my favorite. The first time, it was sliced up, and looked like roast beef. It came with a tasty brown sauce and was served cold. The meat was tender and flavorful, but for me there was a strange sort of after-taste…a very doggy sort of after-taste.

The second time we had dog it was in a sort of stew with onions and peppers, served over rice. I really liked it this time.  It was so tender and flavorful, with less of the wet-dog after taste.

Fresh puppy stew.

3. Snake

Ever since I saw Crocodile Dundee, I have wanted to try snake.  Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom changed my mind for a while, but I decided if the snake was dead, I’d have no qualms.

So when Ricky and I went to a barbecue joint, we decided  to get a little snake to throw on there. Honestly, it was quite good. I think it was pretty fatty, because it shrunk up a lot on the barbecue, and it was fairly chewy.  But with a dip in the right sauce it was quite enjoyable.

2. Frog Legs

Now, I’m from Texas, so I had tried frogs legs before, nice deep fried ones.  This was Ricky’s first time though, and enjoyed it well enough. The meat was a bit bland, but the texture was nice. It was sort of a mix between fish and chicken. I liked it very much and could definitely make a meal out of it.

1. Crocodile

Tasty tasty meat. Really. The flavor of the meat was delicious. It was a little chewy for my taste, but the flavor was just right. Ricky and I ate this right up.  As a bonus, the day before, we had visited the local crocodile farm, so we got to take a look at this succulent creature before it ended up on our plate.

The many inhabitants of the local croc farm.

To the right of the bowl, frog legs. At the 11 o'clock, crocodile.

Arachnophobe vs. Huntsman: The Showdown

So one of our readers asked us recently about the spiders here in Laos, and I figured today would be the perfect day to tell all about it. Let me explain why.

Just over a week ago we were in the Kong Lor caves in central Laos and if you guys would like to click the link…

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giant_huntsman_spider

…you’ll see that’s where the world’s biggest spider is from that cave.

Now, let me say, that we didn’t SEE that spider, nor come into contact with it while we were there. Also,  I am a serious arachnophobe and run for the hills when any spider bigger than an ant is nearby or in the room, and I’m sure many people could corroborate my story! So it’s a good thing we didn’t actually see that spider.

What DID we come in contact with? Well, I try my best to avoid looking for them or even seeing them by accident, but today (the same day Talia almost crashed the motorbike, making this even more of a rather shitty day) I saw one.

A big one.

One of the biggest ones in fact, a huntsman, the little brother of the biggest spider in the world. I walked into our guesthouse room earlier, turned on the light, turned back around and there was a huntsman spider sitting on the bed looking at me, waiting for me to make my move.

Well…… I made my move. I ran leaving the door open and screamed at the top of my voice “TALIA! THERE’S GI-F*CKING-GANTIC SPIDER IN THE F*CK*NG ROOM, PLEASE DO SOMETHING, PLEASE!!!”

Talia here. When I went into the room, the spider wasn’t there, so I entered cautiously. All of a sudden a blur ran across the floor and up the wall. The next second the blur was on the floor again, running to Ricky’s shoes. The thing moved so fast that I thought there were two of them.  Instead of attempting to get at it myself, I opted for getting help from the guesthouse owner, who promptly smashed the spider with his shoe and flicked it outside. He checked the room and bathroom for more spiders. The room was empty and the man left without a word.

The spider pictured is from the internet and is not ours. The spider I saw was slightly bigger than this one.

Now I have to go and never sleep ever again. 

Dusty Roads, Dusty Faces: Getting to the Country

Well, friends, we’re back, after a long and dusty road of…dust. Seriously. That’s about all I can recall from our last couple of drives. We left Vientiane, having done all that city has to offer (like seeing the abandoned water park and trying to find the zoo that mysteriously disappeared at some point), two days ago, apparently a Tuesday. We never really know anymore.

The long road ahead



Getting a drink of water before heading on again.

 

We drove to a small town called Paxsan, one of those places where if you blink, you miss it. And we pretty much did. When we got close to the town we saw a guesthouse and decided to get a room there, as opposed to driving on and trying to find another one. The room was cheap, which was fine, but I’ll get to the not-so-fine stuff in a minute.

We dropped our things off, and headed back on the road to find a place with internet and food so we could do a little blogging. We drove couple kilometers and the small wooden buildings became ever more sparse so we had to pull over and ask each other if we had passed the whole city. We had, so we turned around and drove through the two or three streets of the actual town. And apparently the whole town is internet-free, so we satisfied ourselves with overpriced drinks at a bar outside of town, not blogging. Meanwhile, a few feet away from us, the ladies that run the place were sitting on the floor watching TV, while pulling wings off of giant bugs that they would later eat.

Ladies hard at work.



The final wingless product

If you want to see them in action, here's a video for you.

We ended up going back to our guesthouse where I debated taking a shower, but I decided against it. To do so would require me to stand against the toilet, over the flush-bucket (a bucket full of water and a scoop to dump water into the toilet when you’re finished. Also doubles as back-side wash water after a healthy number two), and far too close to a huge cockroach carcass being carried away by hundreds of tiny black ants. Instead, I took a nap, covered in red grit from the dusty drive.

 When I woke up, Ricky and I went for dinner at a karaoke place where no one was singing and there were 3 whole tables of people. I ordered “fried fish with basil.” What came to me was undercooked, boiled fish with onions and carrots, whole leaves of basil on stems, and sliced peppers in an unbearably spicy sauce. By the third bite I felt like even my teeth were on fire.

Now, there are a few things I really dislike: snow on my face, overuse of the word random, Crocs. But needlessly spicy food is at the top of the list. Everything from my gums to the back of my throat were tingling with some sort of mutant-power chili spice.  I had to take a break every couple of bites so I could down some more soda, and by the time I was finished (and given away the mushy uncooked bits to the begging dogs around my feet), I was so grumpy and in pain that I demanded we stop to find ice cream on the way home, which we did.

Today we got up and headed out of the guesthouse, once again not bothering to shower. The roach was gone, but when Ricky tried to rinse his hands off in the shower, the shower head fell off.  So we hit the road, not caring how dirty we were, because we knew we’d just get dirtier. And did we ever.

Now, I sweat. A lot. And here in Laos it’s incredible the way my sweatstache reappears just seconds after wiping it away. So when I’m covered in sweat and then driving on sometimes-unpaved roads, I get real dirty real quick. Take a look at this pic. That’s not tan. That’s dirt.

Here's a better view of the karsts behind us.

And an even better one.

We also had to drive through veritable clouds of white butterflies. Now, butterflies may look delicate and sweet, but when you hit them going 80 km an hour, they feel like rocks pelting you.

 When Ricky and I finally got into the village we were to stay at, I was so gritty and dirty that I could scrape off layers of it with my fingernails. We decided to eat before we really got settled, and while we waited for the food, I decided to have look at a nearby market for a loofah or bath scrub of some sort. What I found was a scouring pad, guaranteed to get rid of grease and grime. Well, I was covered in that stuff, so I bought it, and let me tell you, I’ve never felt cleaner.

Of course, the glory of my super clean and shiny skin didn’t last long, because the power shortly went out, so Ricky and I played cards by headlamp in the main building, while small children chased puppies in the dark and somehow did not fall.

So now the lights are back on and I am typing this while we wait for our post-dinner dinner. The Lao boy next to me is playing World of Warcraft and there’s a moth fluttering on the floor. I have to admit that the last couple of days have been pretty strange, but sitting next to this kid that thinks he’s a warlock is pretty cool.