Diving

Would you like some ants in your curry, ma’am?

I just picked up a piece of popcorn that fell on the bed last night and ate it.This probably means that I’m a disgusting pig but it also got me thinking about all the other disgusting food incidents that happened the last few years while living abroad.

Delicious ant-free Thai breakfast rice on a beach on Koh Lanta.
Delicious ant-free Thai breakfast rice on a beach on Koh Lanta.

We used to get two meals a day in the divecentre I worked for, brought over from the local village. they were packs of rice and fish or chicken curry wrapped in paper. Very tasty, unless it was your lucky day and you got the curry with chickenfeet. Or chickenneck, which is basically a string of crunchy bones with very little meat. Ugh.

Once, a gecko fell onto my plate. It was probably sitting on the ceiling of the restaurant, eyeballing the flies that were everywhere when it suddenly found itself running around in my fried noodles. Oops. 

The gecko was fine. The noodles too. Nom.

In the same restaurant, which was/is my favorite restaurant, I ordered my trusty comfy-food staple vegetable curry with rice. It was delicious as always, untill I noticed ants floating around between the carrots and babycorn. Dozens of them. I was so HUNGRY and couldn’t have waited for a new order so a girls gotta do what a girls gotta do, and sometimes that’s eating ant curry.

(The restaurant, by the way, is Barracuda on Gapang Beach, Pulau Weh, Indonesia. If you’re there go check it out. I’m not sure if this piece is good advertisement, but the owners are the best and their food is fantastic. Even with ants. I love you guys!)

By the way, I just went to get a sugarcane juice from the fancy juicebar that opened recently across the border, and got served by a very sweet guy who was wearing a hairnet and gloves. Very hygienic, except that he had a wild beard that reached his nipples. Don’t get me wrong, I love beards, but it led me to google “hairnets for beards”, which would make ordering a juice so much more terrifying.

I’m not particularly brave when it comes to ordering strange foods, so I happily let the fertilized eggs or fried scorpions on a stick pass. I think ant curry is my limit. What strange expected or unexpected things have you eaten on your travels?

 

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