Letter from Thailand

Please, anything but cheese

Tibor Krausz Guardian Weekly, April 2004

“Taste like crispy-fried chicken skin,” Peng assures me it’s so hot it would singe any unwelcome tang out of my encouragingly. Not really: after a wary tongue-on-guard tastebuds. I also pass up on the giant, alien warship-like bite I find they taste more like potato crisps with a waterbugs, fine delicacies though, I’m told, they are. piquant Mexican flavour. But not so bad at all, even with their heady rank smell: like burning hair. I nibble some My buddies’ appetite and my curiosity slaked, I said that more - if not with relish, no longer with mounting all things considered, insects have nothing on and nausea either. Fried grasshoppers may not become a chicken. “You foreigners eat horrible things,” Wat regular staple of my diet, but they’ll do as a snack. admonishes me. “Like cheese.” Mind you, this from a “Look for the ones pregnant with eggs,” Peng advises. chap who relishes kai kao , a half-boiled egg with a “They’re super-delicious.” sizeable chick embryo cooked in its own juices inside.

I’m in Khon Kaen, an up-and-coming prairie town in Wat has a point, though. What we stomach is a matter of Isaan, as the country’s impoverished rural northeast is personal taste conditioned as much by customs and known to Thais. Judging by the suspenseful attention habits as flavours and nutritional values. Jews and Peng, Wat and Geo award to my every bite, my Muslims flinch at the thought of . Everyone except newfound buddies have decided to treat our table to a Scots recoils from . Only Japanese gourmets will scrumptious insect feast - by way of desserts - solely to touch fugu-sashi , an ultra-poisonous raw blowfish dish. gross out a farang (white foreigner) for a lark. Westerners frown on snake, dog and monkey as far too “exotic”. After years in southeast Asia, I strive to But I’m . And it’s not just to show I’m not a keep an open mind and palate. finicky mama’s boy; I have my own motives - although my culinary adventure may not become the stuff of Still, I have to draw the line at live cockroaches. Some legend, it should do fine as a been-there, done-that chaps here swear by them as a wonderful dietary anecdote. I may be a little tipsy too. supplement. Occasionally they like to grab a plummy fat specimen scurrying underfoot and macerate the hapless So here we go, ordering 20 bahts’ (50 cents’) worth of creepy-crawly in gulps of Mekong Whisky. Ostensibly, silk and bamboo worms to go with another round of cockroaches do wonders to your virility. Singha beers. Under a dangling overhead lightbulb, a creasy-skinned vendor is standing at attention So do scorpions. “Try these,” Geo urges me, indicating expectantly. Apparently he figures he can make a killing the large jet-black devils occupying pride of place on the with his choice fare of side orders. He can indeed. vendor’s cart. Even fried, they look plenty menacing. “Eat one, and you’ll sting like a scorpion, ha ha!” Yeah, Silkworms, cream-coloured and capsule-size, taste like - right. You go ahead, chief. I’ll just have to make do well, to be perfectly honest, I’m not really sure. I without. consume a few together with mouthfuls of fried rice to temper my repulsion. They do leave a briny aftertaste, “Haarghh!” Geo grimaces. We’re rinsing the buggy though. Bamboo worms, matchstick-long critters these, aftertaste out of our mouths with iced watermelon. are remarkably like salted cornflakes. Beetles’ sturdy Rather than picking out the black seeds and flicking protective shields set your molars grinding in agony, but them onto the Formica tabletop as he does, I am ah the reward! They have the exquisite flavour of swallowing bite-sized pieces, seeds and all. Geo delivers crust seasoned with Bakelite. I cop out of the chilli ants his verdict on my dietary habits: “Now that’s and termites platter, although, this being Isaan, probably disgusting!”

Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004 http://www.guardian.co.uk/guardianweekly/letterfrom/story/0,12807,1187831,00.html