Cute as a Bug: or,
You Gotta Draw the Line Somewhere

I first came to Asia with a reasonably adventuresome palate. But I had no idea what I was getting into. Hitchhiking – less hitching than hiking – in Portuguese Timor, now called East Timor, I trudged into a village, tired, with the sun going down. Someone kindly invited me to spend the night in his home. His wife cooked some tough dried meat, more radically than liberally laced with tiny purple-black chilies. So hot it made your ears vibrate. Afterwards I was informed it was dog. Perhaps overwhelmed by the chilies I hadn't considered what is was beforehand. Hmm…well, so much for that. Crossed that line without knowing it.

But you gotta draw the line somewhere, so I figured bugs. Good protein maybe, sure. But no bugs. Unh-uh.

I had a girlfriend named Maew once, met her in Ban Chang near Utapao Airbase, we took a trip to her family's home in Chaiyaphum province. Way out there in the sticks. Went with dad early one morning, checking his bird snares. Collected 4 or 5 quail-like birds, but all their heads had been chewed off, their butts too. Pahngpawn (mongoose) said dad. They'll eat a whole snake, but only bird's heads and butts, don't like feathers. You learn something every day.

I pointed to a 2-inch diameter hole in the ground. Boong said dad. What's a boong? So dad digs a hole with his machete, angled to intersect the first hole about 10 inches underground. Then he takes a stick and pushes it gently down the first hole while reaching down the second. He pulls out a tarantula big as your hand. Had him behind the ears. Beung . Puts it in a bag and digs up a few more on the trail home.

Boong

Back at the ranch dad sends one of his youngest out for a bottle of lao kao, white lightning. One wall of the open living room was the showplace for a couple hundred empty Budweiser cans. Maew had a G.I. boyfriend before. Cooking was done in one corner, a square of raised earth about 6 inches high contained by planks with a low iron tripod in the middle.

Dad took a shine to me, seems Maew's previous beau didn't much enjoy tramping about the bush. So we sit around the coals and have a shot of white whiskey. Then dad takes the bag and with a set of 18-inch long chopsticks deftly lifts a tarantula out of the bag and flips it onto the coals. Stopped wriggling PDQ, the hairs were vaporized in an instant. Then he flips it over for another 10 seconds or so, pulls it out with the chopsticks and offers it to me. Saep (delicious) he says.

Umm, kop khun mak I said, politely refusing. Saep he repeated and popped it in his mouth with gusto, leaving the head. Jesus!! Poured me a second shot of lao kao . He cooks a second tarantula and again proffers it to me. No thanks. The shock was wearing off but just I couldn't see myself eating a tarantula – no way. Have some more whisky said dad.

Each time he cooked another he'd politely offer it to me first then devour it with great apparent pleasure, followed by another shot. Wasn't used to white lightening in the morning – wasn't used to strong alcohol at all. After about the fifth critter had been lifted from the coals and offered to me it was surprising how easily – though perhaps a mite slurred – I said OK.

It was good! Saep in fact. Couple more shots, couple more bugs and I was toast. Took a nap until lunchtime. Sticky rice, small birds, leaves foraged from the jungle and jaew padaek, fermented fish hot sauce. After lunch dad fired up his bong. Country living, can't beat it.

Tasty Meng Das - Giant Water Beetles

That afternoon a traveling entertainment troupe from Bangkok entered the village to perform at a temple festival in the evening, complete with great hulking squawky speakers, a movie projector, musicians and dancing girls, including the obligatory transvestite. One good-looking dancer aroused talk amongst the village women: who does she thinks she is, pretending she's from Bangkok, she's as Isan as you or me!

Maew and me and a brother and sister or 2 or 3 were down at the beung , a swampy pond, collecting snails and clams when the whole troupe came down to swim. The girl in question waded through the rushes at the far end of the pond alone. Suddenly she started shrieking, flailing and thrashing and falling through the reeds, not a trace of Bangkok left in her hysterical voice.

Protein

Evidently a leech had crawled up inside her. She was completely freaked! Once ashore she started running helter-skelter through the jungle. Her friends ran laughing after her, caught her and dragged her back to edge of the pond. Some discussion followed as to the best solution to the problem. I kept hearing dtakadtaen, grasshopper. What does a grasshopper have to do with leeches?

I soon found out, so did the girl. Someone came back with a huge green one about 3 inches long. Then several people held the poor screaming girl pinned to the ground while two others forced the grasshopper in her mouth, holding her nose and mouth shut until she gagged it down. Jesus!!

They released her and she bolted fast as a deer back into the jungle, once again gaily pursued by several laughing members of the troupe. After about 10 minutes they caught her again. This time they brought her sobbing incoherently back to the village where the elder women were consulted.

Evidently the grasshopper hadn't worked. Mollified by the fact that the girl had dropped her Bangkok pretensions, they had a solution. They made a smoulder of certain noxious herbs and had the girl squat over it, keeping the smoke inside her sarong. Apparently it was effective. Somewhat shaken but no longer hysterical the red-eyed girl emerged from the house a half hour later. Makes you wonder.

Well, it became increasingly easy to eat bugs of all sorts. But I still drew the line at raw bugs. One must preserve something – I didn't know exactly what.

Another day, another year, I was outside of Khon Kaen looking for a village to weave Mexican hammocks, not having much success.

Big Beung in Isan

A villager I met invited me to check his fish traps with him in another big beung. He poled his pirogue from one wicker trap to the other collecting an assortment of small fish including freshwater blowfish. On the far shore he made a fire then went to collect some big round pond snails. The fish flipping and flopping, he threw straight onto the coals, scales, innards and all, turned them after a couple minutes and put them on a big teak leaf. Don't get much fresher than that.

The snails: first he broke open the snail's trapdoor with his thumb, then gouged out the inside with a sharpened piece of bamboo. I watched with curiosity when he walked over to a nearby clump of bushes, peering amongst the leaves. Ahh, he said, finding what he was looking for, an ant's nest evidently. He thrust the snail-on-a-stick into the shrubbery and came back a second later. About 20 big red ants had attached their mandibles into the pale snail-flesh.

He produced a small bag of salt from somewhere and poured it on another big leaf. Then he took the snail and ants, rubbed it in the salt and popped it in his mouth. Good God! I knew those ants – they hurt when they bit! Saep, he said with great satisfaction. Try one. Uhh, no thanks just the same. I could hardly believe what I'd just seen.

He went back to his boat and produced a bottle of lao kao. Tarantula flashbacks. I ate the fish and drank. He ate the fish and the snail cocktail and drank, offering me several more snails before devouring them himself with relish. (Chewing quickly I might add).

Well, after four or five shots, I acquiesced and tried one. It reminded me of a fresh oyster with limejuice! See, these ants are full of formic acid, which is very sour – and good for you in some way. Decidedly, distinctively saep. Another Rubicon crossed.

Since then I no longer draw any more clear distinctions as to what I will or won't eat. Believe me, I've eaten some pretty weird stuff. But if it tastes good and doesn't make you sick its good. Certainly one's aesthetics concerning what is or isn't palatable must undergo some sort of evolution. As with all our preconceptions. But that's why – or should be why – we travel; to open ourselves to new experience and hopefully fuller acceptance of what is – not to reinforce what we previously thought. You gotta draw the line somewhere – or do you?