“You must try the spider,” our friend told me and photographer, Tom Mills, as he drove us to the Cambodian village.
I think both of us reacted the same way. “The what?”
Apparently in the tiny town of Skuon, they fry up tarantula-sized spiders and sell them by the roadside to locals and wide-eyed tourists.
“No one seems to know how this micro-industry developed around Skuon,” I read in my Lonely Planet guidebook as we got closer, “although some have suggested that the population may have developed a taste for these creatures during the years of Khmer Rouge rule, when food was in short supply.”
I’m a somewhat picky eater, but I get much more adventurous in foreign countries. Spider, though, added a new level of queasiness, and I wondered if the cooked ones would still creep me out like the living ones always do.
As soon as we arrived, a woman approached us with a large metal bowl filled with crispy brown spiders. Underneath the bowl was a plastic bucket, and when she picked up the bowl, our friend pulled out a large leafy branch. There were live spiders crawling on almost every leaf. (see picture below)
Sufficiently unnerved, I was then handed a piece of fried spider. I ate only the tiniest bit, just enough to say I’d done it.
Tom, on the other hand, chomped down on a full leg.
The answer to everyone’s question? It was chewy.
Then with our stomachs digesting the arachnids, we headed down the road toward the village where we would meet some local Christians. We had several meals with them, which thankfully did not include spider.
You can read their story in the July/August issue of the magazine.
-Becky Hill
After years of sending readers around the world through his stories and articles, Chris Lawrence recently transferred from Worldwide Challenge to the Campus Ministry, specifically working with Lifelines. You can learn more about Lifelines by checking out the photo essay in the latest issue, beginning on page 28.
worldwidechallenge.wordpress.com 