Running Amok

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The national dish in this country is called "Amok", and it is a yummy fish curry made with coconut juice and vegetables, and is sometimes served in a banana leaf or in a coconut, as you see in the photo. Amok is easy to love and as a result of eating too much of it, I am also "running amok". Nothing unusual in that you might conclude insightfully. Another dish I unsuspectingly discovered is duck egg, whereby I thought I was going to eat a nice normal yellow egg, with a salad. The shell was too tough for starters, and I began to have doubts about what lay within. Some helpful locals sharing the same table assisted me and showed me what to do, emptying the grey and white slimy fetus onto a saucer, while my stomach lurched, in nervous anticipation of what is to come. To bail out at this point would be like a wimp, or a travel novice, so I decide that in order to get this thing into my stomach, I would have to switch my mind off and to not think about babies and fetuses and cute little fluffy ducks, and so forth. Using the salad and the chilli, and the salt and pepper mix, I liberally doused the mangled fetus and in it went. The hard skull/ bone like parts really grossed me out, but I proudly polished it off, payed the bill, and arrived back at the hotel, grasping my stomach. It stayed down but I will never look at ducklings in the same way ever again, and I will never repeat that menu.
The other rather weird pics in this blog depict Siem Reap pastimes, such as selling your feet to the local fish, who proceed to chew the surplus skin off your soles. It does make one squirm at first,- it''s a bit more intense than a mere tickle. So to conclude, the moral of the story is, in Cambodia one first feeds the fish with your own body parts, and then finally you eat the fish, when you have fulfilled their growth, and that's the story of the nation, and the national dish. We all are hungry and eat each other. Is this the history of mankind?

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