One of the great pleasures of travelling is trying all the various types of local foods available. Some are delicious, others are not, others again are beautiful to look at but taste terrible, while other evil-looking substances taste heavenly.
Here are a few examples of some different types of food I have eaten from around the world, as well as others I had no intention of eating and never will. There's only so far an open mind will take you before your churning stomach says a very distinct no!
One of my favourite meals in Laos was the Luang Prabang speciality, buffalo soup. This was flaming-hot with chilis - one of the spiciest meals I have ever eaten, up there with Thai green papaya salad (som tum) - but it's so tasty that the burning only added to the pleasure. Of course having plenty of fine Beer Lao on hand helps too! Another great facet of Lao cuisine was the presentation of rice (always the delicious sticky variety) in a tiny woven rice basket with a lid. When you've finished your meal, it's good manners to place the lid back on top of the rice basket.
I've also added a photo of the very yummy Lao spicy beef salad called "larb", again served with sticky rice. I had this after a very long motorbike ride over the Bolaven plateau, my hands were so sunburnt I could barely pull the rice out of the rice basket!
The photo below shows a close up of a Filipino delicacy called 'balot'. (WARNING: the photo of the 'balot' may be confronting for some readers.) As much as I like to try different foods wherever I travel to, there are still some limits that I cannot bring myself to break through. Balot is one of them. This is basically a duck embryo still in its shell. The shell is peeled off by hand to reveal the blue foetus and hard-boiled yolk. The entire contents are eaten. Watching Filipinos eating this was unbearable for me, my stomach somersaulted. They seem to particularly enjoy the sensation of the duck's beak crunching between their teeth. This has to be on a par with some of the world's most extreme eating experiences, such as eating fried tarantulas in Cambodia.
The food in the plastic cup is called 'taho', from the Philippines. It's soft fresh tofu with tapioca in a sweet warm palm sugar syrup. Great for breakfast! I had this every day, it was sold by local vendors carting the ingredients around in two cans suspended from a long piece of wood that the vendor carried across his shoulder. As he walked around with his burden, his cry of "Taho!" would echo across the village.
Have you ever tried any of these foods? Or how about something that was so repulsive that you couldn't eat it? Let me know what you thought of them!
