Thailand II

The first insects I had eaten were in the evening market on Sunday, the first day I'd gotten into CM. The mixed bag was about 60 cents U.S. and contained six kinds of insect. They were all pretty good, but a few kinds were delicious.

I'd bought them at this table; there was only one such vendor at the market that late afternoon.



I'm aware that pictures like this are kind of a tacky standard subject for foreign tourists, and I felt a little strange shooting away like this, just as if I was some gawker. But I tried each kind of insect and then bought a second bag for later, and some of these were very tasty. For my money, the best of all were the BIG grasshoppers.


The conference,

Edible Forest Insects: Humans Bite Back

took place on a Tuesday/Wednesday/Thursday. Presentations took up the first day, and that evening there was a banquet of sorts. The main courses were beef, pork, chicken, and fish; before these dishes were many insects. I tried all of them.

The Bamboo Caterpillars

and grasshoppers were among the best. Unlike most of the other conference-attendees, I tried all of the insects on offer, though several of them weren't fantastic:

Of these, the ones in the lower right quadrant -- the bedraggled sphinx moth, the rhinoceros beetle, and the longhorn beetle cut off by the edge of the image -- were pretty bad. The Giant Water Bug also was disappointing. But the large crickets (genus Brachytrupes) in the upper right area, and the house crickets on the left side of the plate, were quite good, as were the two varieties specified already. After finishing the great majority of this plate I will admit that I was ready for the vertebrate selections that evening.

The second day consisted of a driving tour full of stops related to the development of insects in one application or another, but mostly as foods. We went to an insect zoo; a cricket farm; a bee farm; and another market -- where I sampled some deep-fried scorpion.

One of the 39 cricket pits housed in an unwalled area the size of a four-car garage -- a concrete circle a meter across and half as high. It's a self-contained cricket utopia (except for the part about being harvested as food, but then the crickets themselves never know about that part). There's plenty of hiding places, food [chicken feed], and water [two plastic water-bottles laid on their sides, with paper towels out of the holes punched to let the capillary action draw the moisture up for the insects to drink -- brilliant in its simplicity!] There's even a handy laying-tray with the right kind of substrate: coconut husks and potting soil. The eggs can hatch in a new pit and thereby start off the next generation. Seven weeks later, harvest time.

The scorpion (Heterometrus spinifer, looks a lot like the emperor scorpion that's a somewhat-popular pet choice among certain circles here in the U.S.) didn't have a lot of real flavor, but the texture of the exoskeleton was unique, and a fairly pleasant eating experience. But it was hardly as much fun to eat as some already mentioned items.

The last day included some papers (including mine, which went pretty well) and group meetings.

Afterward I hit the night-markets, as I'd done several times by then. The next two days were spent with new friends on a driving tour -- we drove Northwest-ish from Chiang Mai towards Myanmar, and stayed at the Cave Lodge. It was amazing: a large cave with thorough tours, a five-minute walk from the Lodge.


Best of all: after the tour, we lay ourselves on the dry riverbed and watched the hundreds of thousands of cave swifts speeding through the evening air, back to their perches in the cave. Spectacular!! The shots I took didn't do them justice, but a charming Montrealean named Madga sent me some video she had shot. If anyone just has to see it, let me know and I'll try to send it to you.

Too soon I had to return to Chiang Mai and fly home, to Bangkok, where I wasn't able to see a thing because I didn't plan it into this trip; then Tokyo, where I had sushi in the airport; and back to Chicago, Boston, then home at last to modest, cozy Providence. I'm looking forward to my next trip to Thailand; we'll have to see how soon I'll be able to go.

Colbert and then Thailand: Part One

I've been back a little over a week and it's time to start describing my adventures.


Being on The Colbert Report was great, though the interview wasn't quite everything I'd hoped for. A bunch of people had commented that it's too bad he didn't try an insect and I guess that's true. I was nervous and didn't quite live up to my own standards but I had fun, didn't embarrass myself too much, and even made him laugh so that's something. I didn't get my picture taken with him or anything like that, so there's nothing to show you really. At the time I didn't have that starstruck 'must get photo opp with celebrity' thing.

I stayed overnight in Manhattan and managed to do some extra filming with an independent TV maker the next morning. Took the Acela train back and had a few hours in the evening with my family. Finished packing. Left for Logan Airport around 1am [thanks again John!]. Then to a layover in Chicago, where I was smart enough to buy Nyquil. 13 hour flight to Tokyo, then to Bangkok and then Chaing Mai at last. My first time in Asia.

Chiang Mai is a medium-sized city full of bad air, tourists, temples, and street shopping. It never took very long for me to get a little sick of walking the streets yet the city has its charms. Due to my limited world-travel background it was like a different world, though as you can see some things are universal:



The streets were very quiet in the mornings and full at night, even though the days weren't so hot when I was there. Lots of foreign shops, probably for the farangs [tourists]. Lots of everything except urban greenspace.

And then those temples:

But the heck with the scenery: you might want to know whether I ate insects there. Do you think I'm the kind of guy who would eat insects there? THAT will have to wait for the next installment.