Snake and Crickets, because you have to eat something crazy while in South East Asia.

Eating crazy food in Asia is just one of those things you have to do, you won’t like it, you don’t really want to but you have to cross it off the I traveled Asia list. It’s up there with ride a motorbike, get your nails done or a massage for a dollar and eat at a street stall. I have to admit when going to have snake for dinner was suggested every part of me wanted to say no and the only reason I found myself sitting there was because I just had to do it for the experience and because there was no way in hell I was going to do it alone later.

So off we headed psyching ourselves up and no one looking particularly excited. We drove miles out of town and pulled off onto a little dirt road to arrive at a concrete compound that was the snake restaurant, this was definitely the tourist type of restaurant, it was genuine Vietnamese. On offer was snake, lizard, frog and insects, YUM.  

First up was preparing the snake, this involved taking its head off  and draining the blood out. After the trauma of watching them kill the snake we were then offered the still beating heart and a bottle of vodka infused with the blood of the snake, needless to say none of us girls were going to eat that, my gag reflex was working overtime.  Andrew decided to be the brave one and swallowed it whole and beating.  The vodka was put away for later when a significantly larger amount of alcohol had been consumed and another round of beer was ordered, we were all to sober to experience this.

Once we had all recovered briefly from the snake heart our plate of crickets was brought out as the entree  The look on all our faces said it all and we all apprehensively picked up a cricket with our chopsticks, took in a big brave breath and crunched down. For all of you that know me well you know that I am irrationally freaked out by cockroaches, give me a spider any day  but a cockroach will send me jumping on the table, even the word make me shudder. A cricket’s legs look remarkably like a cockroaches and crunching down on the spiky little thing with its spiky little legs is an experience I hope to never have for the rest of my lifetime.

Our snake dishes were up next, snake in leaf and fried snake. The snake in leaf looked perfectly harmless and kind of like the beef in leaf I had eaten a few weeks earlier if I hadn’t known that it was snake it would have been fine but no I knew it was snake, snake that had been alive and slivering until very recently.  It tasted like sand in leaf more than anything, turns out the just crush up the snake bones and all so you end up with snake sand and its not really nice at all, even wrapped in a leaf.

We all left the restaurant a little traumatised and headed straight for the golden pine shots were needed!!!! Many shots! The night continued and we had all recovered and were having a good time, then someone remembered the snake blood vodka. No amount of alcohol could dispel the fact that blood, real blood was mixed in with that vodka and it is quite possibly the worst shot of anything I have ever done, it messed with your head and tasted terrible anyway. Yuck!

So I did it I have eaten my fair share of weird and terrifying foods in Asia. I have eaten jelly fish, sea snail, frog, cricket and snake. I’m almost relived knowing that I have survived the creepy food portion of the things you must do in Asia