They sell them on the street. they eat them on the street.
they probably harvest them from the street too.
I have eaten two so far. The first one was offered to me outside a restaurant while having a cigarette. Not wanting to be a pussy and certainly not wanting to be a stuck-up white girl refusing to eat something edible, I took a leg and put it in my mouth. That was fine. The nice man with an abundance of bugs then gave me the remainder of the bug (it was a grasshopper to be exact) and I shoved it in my mouth, in front of my friends as they ate, hoping to gross them out.
Instead, I ended up gagging slightly, not from the taste, but more from the texture. The juicy part in the middle was a surprise (thorax, i believe?), and then my brain registered that there was a bug in my mouth. I convulsed from the inside out, but kept chewing and swallowed. Washed it down with red wine. Ok.
The second bug I ate was a stunt for my skype appearance at the Sky Box aerial variety show. That one wasn't so bad, probably because my brain was now prepared for me to have a bug in my mouth. Old news.
They taste like chips that fell in the dirt. Stephanie my co-worker has eaten bugs as performance, and says that the live ones taste more like avocados and that their little leg-barbs stick to your tongue. cute.
I bought this bag of bugs from a woman on the street who I saw three days prior. I didnt think I would see her again, but i just so happened to bike down a side street and see her and her cart outside a construction site. She has a 5 year old son who "funny eyes". It looks like he crossed them while looking at the sun and they got stuck that way. kinda bug eyed.... (Get it? You are what you eat?)
His smile is constant and brilliant and he's really good at helping his mom vend bugs on the street. Who knows, maybe one day he'll take over the family business of snack bugs. The cart also sells sweets that are all various textures and flavors of the same thing- rice with WAY too much sugar. The bugs are right next to the rice things.
I asked for "Sorn" bugs which is "two" in thai.
(Yea. Im learning thai. I can count to 6 before it gets unintelligible)
Anyway, I ask for two, and she gives me two heaping scoops of bugs. I was asking for two bugs. Ok. Thanks, lady.
The whole time this son just keeps smiling at me. I get a bag of bugs and two different colors of sweet rice somethings, and I pay something like... 15 baht. Which is basically 50 cents. It makes sense that if something tastes like dirt it should probably be dirt cheap too.
I say thanks, and I give the kid a crumpled American dollar that's been kicking around in my wallet. Its more of a special fun gift than a charity, because i was really excited to find this bug lady again... although I do feel kinda bad for him that his eyes are all over the place.
I tried to tell him not to spend it all in one place, but I think the joke got lost because I dont speak thai. Yet.
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