On the way to Angkor Wat from Phnom Penh there is a little place called Skuon, if you’re hungry for a snack they have fried crickets and fried spiders (YUMMY!):

Very large fried spiders:

The spiders are a type of tarantula called a-ping. Fried in oil with garlic and some other stuff, I didn’t ask for the recipe. I found the number of spiders disturbing. Where had they all come from?

There must be more where they came from and I wanted to know where that was so I didn’t go there.

I saw a guy bite into one and I gagged.  I could almost hear the torso squish and just imagining what that would be like…. EWWWW! YUCK! Also saw him picking spider out of his teeth after.

Even stranger than eating the spiders was that the children play with them. Like a pet hamster or gerbil. They carry them around, pet them, let them hang off their clothes, talk to them and will let you hold one if you want. I didn’t want. Here are is an adorable girl and her pet spider:

NOT my hand:

One adorable little girl also decided to  freak us out by putting a live one in her mouth:

I would like to thank my friend Becca for the use of the pictures. I couldn’t watch, let alone take a picture.

A lady in our tour group could not get out of Skuon fast enough. She hated the spiders and almost trampled the small children trying get away from the spiders.

This little girl was adorable and had fresh pineapple and not a spider in sight. That was more like it! :

Sometimes you leave a place and then think back to a missed opportunity but I think back and have no problem having not tried or held a spider.

Would you have?