eating asia: crickets, pancakes and coconuts.

i apologize in advance, but none of my travel stories are going to be in any chronological order. i just had some really amazing pancakes for breakfast and because there is internet, i feel the need to tell you about the food here right now.

i guess it was kind of a given that the food was going to be good, but really i had no idea. i am eating all the food and so far i had:

three plates of pad thai. after the first one i was wondering what it was they call pad thai in south africa, because it definitely isn't pad thai. basically i have been to heaven and back with each plate (okay, maybe not the one we had at the restaurant at the petrol station, but it was still really good for petrol station food).

lots of sugared peanuts as a pre-dinner snack. yup, they are sugared here and i like it.

sticky rice topped with coconut for breakfast and blue sticky rice as a topping on coconut icecream.

THE best coconut balls. it must have ranked up there was one of the best sweets experiences of my life.

sour mango with spices.

two crickets. which very actually quite nice. one guy said they tasted a bit like bacon and they actually do. i just feel a bit bad now whenever i hear the sound of crickets in the evenings.

i have sampled four local beers: singha and chang in thailand, ankor and cambodia in cambodia. and of course sampled is a bit of an understatement.

i have had original long island ice tea in a bucket on khaosan road and the head to match the next morning.

lemongrass icetea! that deserves a special mention because it come very close to the thyme tea in the atlas mountains in goodness.

two of two breakfasts consisting of pancakes. america, go away! -your pancakes have nothing on cambodia's. they are doubly as thick, doubly as fluffly, and they are usually served with sweet milk, butter, and fresh fruit.

of course i had lots of coconut juice, most of it served straight up from a coconut which you can get in most restaurants and from the street stalls. but even the one they sell in cans here is not bad at all, because it is unsweetened and has little bits of coconut floating in it.

khmer food in general must be one of the most underrated cuisines ever. it is absolutely fantastic and has its own set of spices, herbs, and flavours. so far i had beef with starfruit salad, fresh springrolls, chicken amok served in a coconut, flat white noodles with vegetable, and have successfully declined to eat a dried snake snack.

to my demise i have realized that i have no problem with eating three full meals per day, even with the constant heat and humidity of a bikram studio all around. i also have not unrolled my yoga mat once. and i have no idea how i will ever go back to eating simply asia or chef pon's. however for now i don't care, because i'm on holiday and there is some more pancakes waiting for me – with fresh fruit, which surely counts for something!

p.s. i have since added the following: the hottest, most delicious green papaya salad, more fresh spring rolls, one with bacon which was a bit odd, a platter full of fresh fish, a home cooked meal with deep fried mushrooms and morning glory with lotus seeds, a shot of spider wine, and this morning i actually ate a spider leg (probably tarantula, it just looked like beef jerky). okay, it was actually more the quarter of a leg, but still, i felt quite heroic and wouldn't be surprised to meet tobey maguire any moment now. 

to eat or not to eat.

yesterday in class we were in half tortoise and i forgot to get out of the posture when everybody else did. well i didn't really forget, i just didn't hear sy when he told us to come out of it. why i didn't hear him? well, i was thinking about my arrival in bangkok and if there were still restaurants open late at night close to the hotel, oh but surely i can get a bowl of pad thai anytime in bangkok, right? so now i apparently not only think about cupcakes but also about pad thai in my yoga classes. next time you worry that you are not focussed enough or that your mind wonders, don’t worry about it, because there might just be a teacher practising next to you who is thinking about noodles.

for this mental slip i blame the fact that i haven’t eaten pasta in 4 (!!!) days for pre-holiday toning reasons and that my mind currently revolves around little else but the planning of my upcoming trip. as you know i am a planner. i plan for a living and i plan for fun and yes, sometimes to a fault. it leaves little room for living in the moment and being spontaneous and all the crap wise things wise people tell you to do if you really want to be happy. but my happiness levels are okay most days and so i continue planning.

at times like these i enjoy the planning immensely because it is like having a mental holiday before the actual holiday and also because planning calms my nerves and i am slightly freaking out here. freaking out because i am going to asia and i have never been and i have always wanted to and what if i hate it and get homesick and cold and and and… so i am planning and since most of my trip has a set itinerary, i am focussing all my attention on the few days that i have added before and after. the amount of research i have spent on junks in halong bay and pondered on the question of how much titanic pre-sinking luxury i can afford is extensive. tripadvisor and i have gotten well acquainted and also my good, old friend google came to the helping when i simply asked: how to pick the best junk in halong bay?

google is like the reincarnated oracle of delphi. it actually found me a blog post comparing three different cruises that the author had all done himself. i like that kind of enthusiasm and effort put into the story and after i went on reading. eventually i found a post of how he went to eat dog in vietnam. let’s leave the question of whether one should eat any animals aside for just a moment and dear vegetarians would you just indulge me for a story of pure adventurous foodie spirit? i need a little food challenge in asia. what should i eat? it’s a given that there will be an entire pastaholic story about the art of eating noodles for breakfast, don’t worry. but here are some of the more … exotic options on the menu which are to be considered:

pets. i don’t want to eat a dog or a cat or a hamster. i completely understand that in other cultures they are considered food and that is fine, but for me they are pets. also hamsters have tiny, little bones and unless it’s a quail tasting likewaffle i am not fan of tiny, little bones.

snake. i think i have ophidiophobia and that extends to eating the things. i sometimes gag just seeing a snake on tv, so i don’t think the attempt to eat one would go down well.

critters and insects. anything that looks like a maggot, and a worm is just a big maggot, is a no. sorry, but i don’t care about their protein content, if you ever had maggots in your house, you wouldn’t pay money to eat some either. but maybe something crunchy, cricket-y as long as it is fried. i like fried and crispy things.

feet and stuff. i have once vetoed a mexican thanksgiving stuffing with chicken feet, but have eaten pigs’ feet and ears, so i am not sure where that leaves me on the issue of feet and other body parts like that.

blood and gore intestines. i would not necessarily say no, unless hanoi in august smells the same as nyc meatpacking district in august.

and that leaves me with the crème de la crème of exotic asian food:

the fertilized egg. a vietnamese speciality. it gives an elegant twist to the conundrum of which came first – the chicken or the egg? and no, as much as i like chicken and eggs, i don’t want chicken in egg. i would however very much like to see some fertilized eggs when they hatch. apparently it happens on the markets in summer sometimes and i think that would be awesome to see. the chicken totally wings it and gets away. sorry sir, but your lunch just hatched and ran off! now i would pay money to see that.

to summarize one could say that though i eat quite a few things, the asian, exotics might not be completely up my alley. but i like a challenge. you tell me what and i take a bite and have a picture taken to prove it too!

camel burger in fez. delicious though i felt slightly bad as we were riding camels 

the next day.

i ate some of henry's brains. the picture does them justice - they were unexciting and mushy.

reasons to jump out of bed and stab your toe.

 

this morning i woke up, jumped out of bed with excitement and stabbed my toe. why?

it was pouring like crazy outside!

usually this would entice me to stay in bed, but for some reason today it made me want to buy wellingtons and jump in puddles.

i am going to asia in a month and a half!

this is not news, but once in a while it just hits me that it is really going to happen.
 

i remembered the quail that tasted like waffle i ate at dear me last night!

yes, you read correctly – a quail that tasted like waffle. the sad thing is that after eating something that amazing you really don’t want to eat anything else ever again. and definitely not a measly banana for breakfast.

it’s friday and we are having three days off!

enough said. have a great weekend.