Udon Thani - A dinner of grasshopper fish

Udon Thani is a town on the northeast of Thailand, near the Laos border. Not too busy, with a nice central market beside a food center selling local fare. Mainly as the launch point into Laos as well as the Ban Chiang UNESCO archaelogical dig site about 47km east of Udon Thani.


Udon Thani - 14Jun'08
Greetings. This is Red reporting from Vientiane. 10pm here and I am on day 2. The travel buddy Kris is off to get a food massage leaving me here internet shop. Pictures are missing cos this PC can’t read my htc touch, no windows m sync installed.

DAY 1 -

Singapore to Bangkok. This bit is as boring as it sounds. Transit and sat around stuffing selves at Suvarnabhumi ‘port. Then was Bangkok to Udon Thani airport. Reached at 5pm in evening. Udon Thani’s a quite little Thai town with minimal tourists running around. They normally head straight to Vientiane from the Udon Thani airport. Walked around (and around) with our gigantic backpacks before settling on a nice Mono Mansion guesthouse/hotel. Went out to the night market area for dinner. Looked around at the shops a bit. The food shops had lots of stuff I can’t eat. Pork sausages, pork balls. pork everything. And lots of stuff I wont eat. Like fried bugs, fried larva….Settled on this fish thats a lot of the shops put on display. BBQed and coated with what looks like salt. Ordered 1 (like 100 baht only) and was halfway through when Kris said theres a grasshopper stuffed into the belly of the fish…

Hokay. I retched.

Much panic later, and after poking at the fish (not me, I didn’t want anything to do with the fish by then), realised that the “grasshopper” was actually a tightly folded bunch of leaves (looks like lemongrass without the smell) and stuffed into the fish belly to give it taste. Gah.