A Cambodian woman shows a roasted spider to a customer at Skun town some 75 kilometers northeast of Phnom Penh. Travellers and traders from around Cambodia flock to Skun buy its renowned arachnids fresh from the vendors, while tourists come to gawp and take pictures of the creepy treats (AFP/Tang Chhin Sothy)
A Cambodian woman eats a spider at Skun town in some 75 kilometers northeast of Phnom Penh. Travellers and traders from around Cambodia flock to Skun buy its renowned arachnids fresh from the vendors, while tourists come to gawp and take pictures of the creepy treats (AFP/Tang Chhin Sothy)Sapa-AFP
SKUN, Cambodia – As Tith Phalla gets off a bus in this bustling market town, she is immediately besieged by a cluster of excited food vendors offering fried black and hairy eight-legged creatures. The 26-year-old has come from Phnom Penh in pursuit of the tastiest "a-ping", or Cambodia tarantula, and this dusty town some 75 kilometres from the capital is renowned for the beastly treat, which Tith Phalla says is tastier than any western fast food.
"Comparing the spider with hamburger, each one has its own taste, but when we eat too much hamburger, it is boring," she tells AFP. "Some Cambodians and foreigners are so scared when they see these spiders, but for me, they are so tasty," she says, eyeing up a plate with hundreds of tarantulas piled high.
Travellers and traders from around Cambodia flock to Skun to buy its renowned arachnids fresh from the vendors, while tourists come to gawp and take pictures of the creepy treats.
According to connoisseurs, the best way to enjoy a spider is fried – cooking destroys a taranatula's venom – and then dipping in garlic and salt. They are also turned into a popular tipple, their ghoulish bodies squeezed into bottles of rice wine.
Vendors in Skun are worried that the destruction of the surrounding forest may soon rid the area of the spiders' habitat, and thus these peculiar but tasty treats may disappear too.
Spiders are believed to have made their way onto the local palette during the Khmer Rouge regime, when Pol Pot's drive for an agrarian utopia forced millions into the countryside. Up to two million people were executed or died of starvation and overwork between 1975 and 1979, and Cambodians turned to whatever sustenance they could find, including spiders, rats and lizards. The Khmer Rouge's murderous regime came to an end, but spiders have remained a popular snack.
"Comparing the spider with hamburger, each one has its own taste, but when we eat too much hamburger, it is boring," she tells AFP. "Some Cambodians and foreigners are so scared when they see these spiders, but for me, they are so tasty," she says, eyeing up a plate with hundreds of tarantulas piled high.
Travellers and traders from around Cambodia flock to Skun to buy its renowned arachnids fresh from the vendors, while tourists come to gawp and take pictures of the creepy treats.
According to connoisseurs, the best way to enjoy a spider is fried – cooking destroys a taranatula's venom – and then dipping in garlic and salt. They are also turned into a popular tipple, their ghoulish bodies squeezed into bottles of rice wine.
Vendors in Skun are worried that the destruction of the surrounding forest may soon rid the area of the spiders' habitat, and thus these peculiar but tasty treats may disappear too.
Spiders are believed to have made their way onto the local palette during the Khmer Rouge regime, when Pol Pot's drive for an agrarian utopia forced millions into the countryside. Up to two million people were executed or died of starvation and overwork between 1975 and 1979, and Cambodians turned to whatever sustenance they could find, including spiders, rats and lizards. The Khmer Rouge's murderous regime came to an end, but spiders have remained a popular snack.
4 comments:
It's wonderful !!
I already tasted it!!
So it is tasty! Now tell me what is the nutritional value of eating tarantulas? If eating tarantulas has no nutritional value then it is not worth eating it and I don't care how tasty it is!!!!!!!
Please leave tarantulas alone for some other animals in the food chain! Just stick with institutional food like beef, chicken? (careful bird flu), pork, fish, and how about become vegetarian? ahahah
This is what happen when Cambodian people become so poor and they can't too choosy about food and just eat it to stay alive until the next day. I don't how Cambodian continue to become like this! The Vietcong hidden face love to see Cambodian people eating tarantulas, snake, reptile, and insect... Find the Vietcong hidden face and kill them all!
Oh gee how open minded and such of you. DAMN THOSE FOREIGNERS FOR NOT EATING FOODS APPROVED BY WESTERN CHRISTIANS.
Please do us all a favor an grow a brain. People have been eating things e consider "strange" for far longer then we have been eating pork, beef, chicken.
as i know they eating them for more than 400 hundrets years....
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