While on a guided tour of the Vietnamese mountain town, Dalat, Rob and I were presented with a number of interesting foods to try. Some of them we willingly did, some took encouraging, and some were a hells no.

Crickets – Part of our tour took us through a cricket farm where crickets are birthed and harvested as food. Human food.

According to our tour guide, the pregnant crickets are the best because they are more juicy. Flash fried and served with a side of hot sauce, we were handed a toothpick to pick our bug.

After much coercing among our group, Rob took the first bite.

I took the second and was surprised to find that they are just a crunch with really no flavor at all. It should be noted, however, that I picked a non-pregnant, non-legged beast to taste test.

Weasel Coffee – During our tour, we stopped by a small cafe known among the locals for it’s weasel coffee. If you don’t know much about this type of caffeine, it involves feeding coffee beans to weasels, harvesting their poop for the undigested beans, and turning it into coffee.

With this coffee being so special, I figured I had to try it. I was actually surprised at how good it was! Details will be refrained since it kind of feels like I would be describing poop. Not being a caffeine drinker, I was pretty amped up after just the small cup I sampled.

While we sipped, our guide told us about how violent weasels can be. They are not so cute after all!

Jack Fruit – This one is not so strange, but the fruit is just so unusual looking that I had to include it. It’s an enormous fruit and the family just had one sliced open in the kitchen, for the kids and workers to take a bite of as they passed.

It tastes like a warm, chewy melon and is much better when served cold.

Silk Worms – After our cricket farm visit, we stopped at a silk farm. The women were working hard to extract the silk from the worms and the finished worms were gathered in strainer buckets.

Our tour guide, feeling snacks, kept popping them into her mouth while she was showing us around. She tried to convince us to taste one, but their size, color, and just ew factor left more for her to eat.

Snake Wine – Fancy bottles of snake wine are sold in the tourist markets and streets of Vietnam. Those ones are usually not for drinking, but the large vats of snake wine made in the homes of the locals, is.

Basically, the snake is added to the wine to ferment and add to the flavor. Wine is a loose term since it’s much more potent and more clear in color.

Those were probably the strangest things we came across while in Dalat. I still stand by my choices of what I didn’t try!

RQ: Which of the foods would you try, if any? Have you ever tried something strange?

Brooke Selb

I’m Brooke Selb, a Personal Trainer and Health Coach specializing in helping busy moms and moms to be to easily juggle mom life with family friendly recipes, and easy exercise routines to help you achieve your fitness goals that fit in with your already busy life with sound nutritional advice.