Snake Rat...Tarantula Oh My!
Trip Start
Sep 25, 2010
1
5
14
Trip End
Ongoing
Kompong Thom, Cambodia
Tuesday, October 5, 2010
Our last day in Siem Reap was spent on a boat exploring the boat village of Tonle Sap Lake. It was fascinating. The 100 families living in the various boat houses subsisted primarily on the water, some of them never setting foot on the ground. The poverty was astounding, women would send their four year old children to hop on our boats to sell us water, or meet us at the floating rest stop with snakes around their necks hoping we would take a picture with them for a dollar.
We ended our visit in a hammock bar watching the sunset and drinking the local Ankor beer. We had the opportunity to eat a few locacl delights. Cooked rat, snake and raw shrimp. I dodged the shrimp, but went for the snake and a little piece of rat. It was dark by that time and i'd like to attirbute that to my poor decision making. Snake tastes like dry ribs though...not bad ha ha.
The next day was spent travelling to Kompong Cham a city located on the Mekong River. After the six hour bus ride we had the option to take a bike tour down the river and over a ferry to a nearby island village. It was perfect. The breeze created by biking helped cut through the humidity and heat and was nice to stretch the legs. Once we ferried over to the island we biked around and explored the village. There were banana trees in every frtonyard and an abundance of kids on the dirt street smiling and waving yellling "hello!"
We stopped at the local buddhist temple where kids of every age were there for the evening program put on by the monks. After I ineracted a bit with the little ones i explored to farther into the temple where i found an outdoor classroom of teenagers learning english by one of the smiling orange clad monks. He invited me in to give the teens a chance to practice their conversational english. Soon i found myself surrounded by sixteen year old Khmer girls. First i started off with the basics, what's your name, how old are you etc. Then i remembered this Cambodian music video playing on the public bus the other day with an english chorus. I started singing "I am sorry" "I am sorry" and the girls instantly knew what i was talking about ha ha apparently he is quite the Cambodian heartthrob. After that the conversation turned to boyfriends and favourite Cambodian t.v. shows. Way more fun than talking about birthdays and favourite colours.
We left as the sun went down, making it back to the mainland and the hotel right before the rain started to pound the ground. After a minute or two to freshen up we hopped onto a tuk tuk and made our way to a local home for dinner. It was delicious, curries, noodle dishes, stir fried vegetables ending with banana's for dessert...better than any banana i've ever had at home. Then the three year old Cambodian toddler came out...with a live tarantula in his hand.. Then his mother came out with a plate of friend tarantula. Nobody told me this would be on the menu. My biggest fear realized... being in the same room as a giant pet tarantula and watching the cambodian family and a few others on the tour eating the furry things. It was the longest hour of my life, people were passing around the appartenly de-fanged spider and offering it to me. I couldn't even speak i was so freaked out and stayed as far away as possible in the small house resisiting the urge to run out for fear of offending the wonderful family who had just served us the amazing feast.
I can eat snake and rat....tarantula is another story. Rational?
Comments
very rational! what if they didnt get allo the venom!!!!!
Well done Em! I'm with you on the 8-legs though. Don't think I could go their either. I probably would have tried to step on the supposedly "de-fanged" beast though.
Maybe a little irrational, em. Tarantulas are probably cleaner than rats...Good for you though!
if you don't eat the tarantula, it will likely eat you.
Brittney has a point...