Does whatever a french fry can.
Yesterday my compatriot Steven and I woke with the sun to prepare for our journey to Phnom Pehn, the capital city of Cambodia. We performed our morning ablutions mostly in silence and dressed with the grave air of men about to embark on a mission of monumental significance.
We wanted ganja, and delicious fried spiders. Unfortunately, the former proved too hard to locate even here, but the latter was in plentiful supply. On the bus to Phnom Pehn, seated at the back with our friend Mr Kahn, we spoke of the many culinary delights that lurk on street corners, basting in their own juices under the oppressive weight of the sun.
The bus crawled through Skun (the famed spider village) with agonizing slowness, like the tortured march of a dying man in the desert. With each ponderous metre travelled the antipation of lunch (and relief for our strained bladders) grew like bitter vines in our hearts.
Eventually we rolled to a halt by a large rest stop, and disembarked. As soon as we stepped off, we were mobbed by a grinning crowd of food vendors, plying their exotic wares on natives and tourists alike. Of all the Westerners, Steven and I were the only two game enough to buy a bag of black, greasy spiders and take them to our little table to devour.
The spiders were quite large, about the size of a child's hand, and fried whole, their juices forming a greasy brown pool beneath them with a rather pleasant barbeque sauce flavour. The legs I ate first, not being quite man enough to just bite in to one with relish like the esteemed Mr Kahn, but I found them to be a delicious mixture of chewy and crunchy, and their flavour, Steven and I decided, could only be compared to curly fries given life.
Emboldened by this pleasant first impression, I bit off the back half, taking the thumb-sized abdomen and a couple of legs into my mouth with the eagerness of an ardent lover. I chewed contemplatively, and on the whole, found the texture and taste very pleasing. The chitinous outer shell is softened slightly by the cooking process, and is a good balance between chewy and crunchy. They truly do taste like french fries, and having chewed and swallowed, I swiftly devoured the rest. The head was different, the fangs crunching between my teeth and the flavour of the spider's vitals left a not unpleasant but exceedingly strange aftertaste. It took some considerable chewing to finish.
I would eat spider again, but the legs were the part I actively enjoyed. Steven, sadly, is allergic to fried spider, much to his disappointment. His throat swelled up and he was rather out of sorts for a while. Fellow adventurer that he is, he still wants to try the spider wine, even though the consequences are potentially unpleasant.
Speaking of unpleasant consequences, we washed down our spider with far too much water, a fact that would become agonizingly clear on the turtlish journey to Phnom Pehn.
Our traitor bladders, no doubt taking an opportunity to talk given their close proximity (we were crushed together in the bus), decided to have a little fun at our expense.
For nigh on an hour, Steven and I sat at the back of the bus, our faces displaying the blank calm of men who scream under the whips of hell on the inside. It became a battle of wills, man against bodily function, as we pitted our vast reserves of willpower and inner strength against the siren call of our straining urinary tracts. I remember little of this hell, as my eyes were fixed on a point directly in front of me, my knuckles white from gripping the seat and my lips set in a tight, thin line that trembled on occasion, betraying the chaos that raged just beneath the surface.
Eventually, Mr Kahn (earning himself a huge lunch in the process), had the driver stop the bus on the side of the road. Steven and I lurched through the tightly packed ranks of Khmers and tourists alike to stumble out onto the dusty ground, the sun beating down on our heads with apocalyptic fury.
Steven managed to maintain some shreds of decency, retreating to the side of a building to finally gain his relief, but I had no such strength. With an impassioned roar, I unleashed my furious wang on the side of the road, in full view of the passing cars, and released a torrential flow of urine the like of which I have never seen, cutting a swath through the dirt like a liquid scythe.
I threw my head back with the enraptured expression of a holy man upon achieving enlightenment, and let the cool waves of bliss wash over me. I turned around, a beatific smile on my face, and shook the last acid drops from the end of my dangling member. The sight of that flopping, white thing, a gigantic anaconda by Cambodian standards, brought many stares from a country entirely unselfconscious about nudity. Too far gone to care, I stuffed it back into my pants and floated back to the bus, drifting gracefully back to my seat and lighting a much-needed cigarette.
When we eventually arrived in Phnom Pehn, Steven and I bought Mr Kahn a large lunch, and bought over-priced butane lighters from an adorable street girl hawking things to tourists. The lighters feature little LEDs that illuminate a picture of a scantily clad white lady whenever the top is flipped, and have won us many Khmer friends already.
The rest of the day was spent jetting around the various markets on the backs of motodopes, buying incredibly cheap DVDs and books, and touring the notorious death camp S.21, which features the beds high-ranking KR prisoners were tortured to death in, photos of people brought there for torture and subsequent execution, and the original devices used to extract information, or just plain sadism. It was a harrowing experience.
I bought an opium pipe in the gift shop.
Unable to contact Steven's friend Savaan, we took a car taxi back to Kompong Cham at the end of the day, after a delicious Indian dinner during which I captured the heart of another pretty Khmer waitress. Whenever she would refill my glass she would grasp my hand shyly then look away, and stare at me in the mirror while I ate my chicken tikka. As always, this was a very self-affirming experience.
The car taxi ride could only be compared to a high-speed sardine can hurtling along a pitch black high-way riddled with treacherous pot-holes. Next time we will be sure to rent the WHOLE taxi, and thus not have to put up with two other Cambodians in the back seat with us, and four in the front, packed in shoulder-to-shoulder.
That done with, we went for a much-needed stroll along the Mekong river, and met up with a pair of likely lads who had a quiet drink and smoke with us, one of them endearingly overjoyed to speak with foreigners, as he had studied English for two years in some remote buttfuck province and had never conversed with Whitey before. The other a rangey motorboat driver who was just happy to "Be our fren" and smoke my cigarettes while chattering merrily.
Apparently, I look like a gangster to Cambodians because of my large tattoos and dangling earring. Fancy that. But, I do not walk like a Cambodian gangster (or playboy), as our new Fren the motorboat driver demonstrated with a lively impression of the stiff-backed testosterone driven stride of the Khmer ne'er-do-well.
Our new Frens eventually wandered off to bed down by the river, so Steven and I took a moto home, and retired to the back garden to enjoy a relaxing cigar after a very full day. Tomorrow we move into our new house. There is much to do, and I am loving every minute of it.
Until next time.
We wanted ganja, and delicious fried spiders. Unfortunately, the former proved too hard to locate even here, but the latter was in plentiful supply. On the bus to Phnom Pehn, seated at the back with our friend Mr Kahn, we spoke of the many culinary delights that lurk on street corners, basting in their own juices under the oppressive weight of the sun.
The bus crawled through Skun (the famed spider village) with agonizing slowness, like the tortured march of a dying man in the desert. With each ponderous metre travelled the antipation of lunch (and relief for our strained bladders) grew like bitter vines in our hearts.
Eventually we rolled to a halt by a large rest stop, and disembarked. As soon as we stepped off, we were mobbed by a grinning crowd of food vendors, plying their exotic wares on natives and tourists alike. Of all the Westerners, Steven and I were the only two game enough to buy a bag of black, greasy spiders and take them to our little table to devour.
The spiders were quite large, about the size of a child's hand, and fried whole, their juices forming a greasy brown pool beneath them with a rather pleasant barbeque sauce flavour. The legs I ate first, not being quite man enough to just bite in to one with relish like the esteemed Mr Kahn, but I found them to be a delicious mixture of chewy and crunchy, and their flavour, Steven and I decided, could only be compared to curly fries given life.
Emboldened by this pleasant first impression, I bit off the back half, taking the thumb-sized abdomen and a couple of legs into my mouth with the eagerness of an ardent lover. I chewed contemplatively, and on the whole, found the texture and taste very pleasing. The chitinous outer shell is softened slightly by the cooking process, and is a good balance between chewy and crunchy. They truly do taste like french fries, and having chewed and swallowed, I swiftly devoured the rest. The head was different, the fangs crunching between my teeth and the flavour of the spider's vitals left a not unpleasant but exceedingly strange aftertaste. It took some considerable chewing to finish.
I would eat spider again, but the legs were the part I actively enjoyed. Steven, sadly, is allergic to fried spider, much to his disappointment. His throat swelled up and he was rather out of sorts for a while. Fellow adventurer that he is, he still wants to try the spider wine, even though the consequences are potentially unpleasant.
Speaking of unpleasant consequences, we washed down our spider with far too much water, a fact that would become agonizingly clear on the turtlish journey to Phnom Pehn.
Our traitor bladders, no doubt taking an opportunity to talk given their close proximity (we were crushed together in the bus), decided to have a little fun at our expense.
For nigh on an hour, Steven and I sat at the back of the bus, our faces displaying the blank calm of men who scream under the whips of hell on the inside. It became a battle of wills, man against bodily function, as we pitted our vast reserves of willpower and inner strength against the siren call of our straining urinary tracts. I remember little of this hell, as my eyes were fixed on a point directly in front of me, my knuckles white from gripping the seat and my lips set in a tight, thin line that trembled on occasion, betraying the chaos that raged just beneath the surface.
Eventually, Mr Kahn (earning himself a huge lunch in the process), had the driver stop the bus on the side of the road. Steven and I lurched through the tightly packed ranks of Khmers and tourists alike to stumble out onto the dusty ground, the sun beating down on our heads with apocalyptic fury.
Steven managed to maintain some shreds of decency, retreating to the side of a building to finally gain his relief, but I had no such strength. With an impassioned roar, I unleashed my furious wang on the side of the road, in full view of the passing cars, and released a torrential flow of urine the like of which I have never seen, cutting a swath through the dirt like a liquid scythe.
I threw my head back with the enraptured expression of a holy man upon achieving enlightenment, and let the cool waves of bliss wash over me. I turned around, a beatific smile on my face, and shook the last acid drops from the end of my dangling member. The sight of that flopping, white thing, a gigantic anaconda by Cambodian standards, brought many stares from a country entirely unselfconscious about nudity. Too far gone to care, I stuffed it back into my pants and floated back to the bus, drifting gracefully back to my seat and lighting a much-needed cigarette.
When we eventually arrived in Phnom Pehn, Steven and I bought Mr Kahn a large lunch, and bought over-priced butane lighters from an adorable street girl hawking things to tourists. The lighters feature little LEDs that illuminate a picture of a scantily clad white lady whenever the top is flipped, and have won us many Khmer friends already.
The rest of the day was spent jetting around the various markets on the backs of motodopes, buying incredibly cheap DVDs and books, and touring the notorious death camp S.21, which features the beds high-ranking KR prisoners were tortured to death in, photos of people brought there for torture and subsequent execution, and the original devices used to extract information, or just plain sadism. It was a harrowing experience.
I bought an opium pipe in the gift shop.
Unable to contact Steven's friend Savaan, we took a car taxi back to Kompong Cham at the end of the day, after a delicious Indian dinner during which I captured the heart of another pretty Khmer waitress. Whenever she would refill my glass she would grasp my hand shyly then look away, and stare at me in the mirror while I ate my chicken tikka. As always, this was a very self-affirming experience.
The car taxi ride could only be compared to a high-speed sardine can hurtling along a pitch black high-way riddled with treacherous pot-holes. Next time we will be sure to rent the WHOLE taxi, and thus not have to put up with two other Cambodians in the back seat with us, and four in the front, packed in shoulder-to-shoulder.
That done with, we went for a much-needed stroll along the Mekong river, and met up with a pair of likely lads who had a quiet drink and smoke with us, one of them endearingly overjoyed to speak with foreigners, as he had studied English for two years in some remote buttfuck province and had never conversed with Whitey before. The other a rangey motorboat driver who was just happy to "Be our fren" and smoke my cigarettes while chattering merrily.
Apparently, I look like a gangster to Cambodians because of my large tattoos and dangling earring. Fancy that. But, I do not walk like a Cambodian gangster (or playboy), as our new Fren the motorboat driver demonstrated with a lively impression of the stiff-backed testosterone driven stride of the Khmer ne'er-do-well.
Our new Frens eventually wandered off to bed down by the river, so Steven and I took a moto home, and retired to the back garden to enjoy a relaxing cigar after a very full day. Tomorrow we move into our new house. There is much to do, and I am loving every minute of it.
Until next time.