The World's Craziest Foreign Foods

Octopus: In Korea you have to eat it before it tries to eat you!

Travelers are never happier than when they are sitting in their hostel comparing disgusting food stories over a cold beer and peanuts. Before you get too judgmental about exotic food choices abroad, remember that we eat lamb, which the Japanese think is just cold, and cow, which nearly a billion Hindus regard as sacrilege.

I’m not sure whether it is just because travelers spend a lot of time there, but Thailand seems to have more than its fair share of entries on the list of extreme foods. Spend any time on the Khaosan Road and the bug trolley will find you! We sampled a mixed bag and found that the frogs were crispy and chewy and pretty good if you ignored the bones. The silkworm larvae tasted like salty custard, the scorpions were overdone and the beetles tasted of floor polish. On balance, a fun snack, but not as good as a green curry from round the corner in Soi Rambutri.

Thailand is also home to the Durian Fruit, the ultimate love it or hate it foodstuff. A Durian looks like a giant spiky cannonball and is full of creamy yellow flesh. The smell is overpowering, a mix of armpits, onions, gas and almonds and the taste is the same, only sweeter. To some, the Durian is the king of fruits. It is also banned on most airlines and you won’t make many friends bringing one into your hostel.

Don’t confuse the durian with the jackfruit, which is larger with smaller spines and full of sweet and tasty yellow flesh. If in doubt, just sniff!

In Ethiopia it doesn’t matter if you order a pizza or a camel curry, it comes with a side of fermented Injera bread. Injera is made from local Tef grain that is left to ferment (make that rot) for a few days before it is cooked. I would like to be kind and say it is an acquired taste, but we never met anyone who had acquired it!

If you think eating Guinea Pig in the Andes is brave, wait until you get to Vietnam and Indonesia and try Balut eggs. The basic recipe for a Balut egg is to take one freshly laid duck egg, wait 28 days until it is about to hatch, then boil it and eat the embryo out of the shell. They are said to be delicious but I wouldn’t know. I will eat absolutely anything, except a Balut egg!

Icelanders regard our obsession with fresh fish as a sign of weakness and prefer Hakarl, or fermented shark. Why would you want to eat a fish straight out of the sea when you can bury it for several months until it has rotted instead? All I know is that it smells much worse than it tastes and it tastes absolutely dreadful!

The South Koreans they have gone one step further down the path of weird seafood than the Icelanders. In Iceland they let their seafood rot, in Korea they don’t bother killing it! Sannakji is a Korean delicacy consisting of a small octopus chopped up alive and eaten with a sesame seed garnish (if you are lucky) before it has stopped wriggling. The taste is fresh, like the sea, and the trick is to chew fast and hard to stop the suckers from grabbing on to your tongue and throat.

After all this bizarre food I would recommend a drink. How about a glass of Kopi Luwak from Indonesia? It is basically just coffee but it is made from beans that have been swallowed and then excreted by civet cats. The digestive process is said to make the coffee taste better. I don’t know if it’s true, but it’s on my list of things to try next trip!