TRAVEL | FOOD | CUISINE
The Strangest Thing I Ever Ate, I Think
I want to believe that I didn’t, but I probably did.
Waaaaayyyyyy back at the beginning of this century, my best friend from high school and I embarked on a 10-week trip over Christmas and New Year for the millennium celebrations. We spent two weeks in the Cook Islands, three weeks in New Zealand, three weeks in Fiji, and two weeks in Tonga.
I still remember booking the flight by phone, the way it was done back then, with the Air New Zealand representative.
“Wow, this sounds like a great trip you have planned.” She said.
We lined up New Years to be in Fiji because we figured that if the world was going to end, we wanted to be trapped on a tropical island, but more because Fiji sits just on the right side of the international date line, and would be the first country to transition into the year 2000.
Upon our arrival, we, of course, found ourselves on the main island of Viti Levu. We wanted to have an experience there before we headed off to another island to hunker down for Christmas and New Year. So we choose to go up into the hills to stay in a village for three nights.
It was a very traditional experience. We stayed in thatched roof huts with 2 mattresses just spread out on the floor. There weren’t even any sheets provided, just a blanket, so we were thankful that we had brought the lightweight sleeping bags that we had made out of sheets before leaving Canada.
As two young girls do, we giggled relentlessly about how creeped out we were by the ruggedness of it all. There were ants crawling in and out of our bags, lizards, bugs, you name it. Back then I had less tolerance for creepy crawlies than I do now, but you can see that we didn’t even have mosquito nets. I can’t imagine how well we slept for those few nights.
Our village experience included all of our meals and accommodation, plus a couple of excursions in the area. Breakfast was pretty standard and lunch was packed up and brought with us on the day trips. But supper was the same every evening.
Each night we would gather in the main building for dinner. It was a large open area with a huge thatch roof on top. On our first night there I noticed rats running along the roof beams. They didn’t bother me because I had traveled enough to know that rats are a common occurrence in many places, but my friend was a little more bothered.
It just added to her grossed-out-ness.
Dinner appeared to be some sort of meat mixed with vegetables and ramen noodles. It had a curry taste to it, and it was palatable. I was surprised when we ate the same thing every night, but never thought much of it. I also did note that there were lots of bones and we were constantly pulling them out of our mouths and setting them aside.
I guess I assumed that it was chicken.
We weren’t too sad to say goodbye to our rugged experience after three nights and found our way to the boat dock to make our way out to Wayalailai where we would spend Christmas and New Year.
Fiji is made up of over 700 islands! Back then, choosing a place to go was done by looking at the trusty recommendations of my Lonely Planet guide. Because it was the millennium, we were sure to book this stay in advance. We had brought our tent with us, so would be camping, but we still made sure that we had a place to be. Again, all of this was done by phone from Canada before we left.
We had an incredible couple of weeks out on the island. There was a whole crew of travelers that had hunkered down to do the same as us and we made fast friends with many.
The camp was located next to a village and the villagers put on 2 huge feasts for us for both Christmas and New Year. We got to watch them roasting the pigs and witness the creation of these giant traditional meals that they were preparing.
For New Year they set off some small fireworks from the beach. Of course, they were really nothing to get too excited about but we learned that they were the first fireworks that the villagers had ever seen! It was certainly a celebration that I will never forget.
One day we were sitting on the beach and started chatting with another couple of travelers. As we tend to do when we meet fellow adventurers, we started to exchange stories of our experiences. We mentioned that we had stayed up in the highlands of the main island, which caught the attention of one of the guys.
He asked us the name of the place we stayed, and of course, I can’t remember it now, but it was the same place that he had stayed, just for one night.
He asked us what we ate, so we told him.
“Did it have little bones?” He asked.
“Well, yeah, it did actually,” I said hesitantly.
“I bet you ate rat.” He said with authority. “Didn’t you see them running all over the place?” He was almost jumping out of his seat with disgust and annoyance at this point.
Of course, I told him that we had seen them, but that still didn’t mean that we ate them.
“Why do you think that we ate them?” I asked him.
It was then that he told us that on the first night he had been suspicious of what he was eating and couldn’t figure out why there were so many small bones. So on the second day, he snuck into the kitchen to see what they were making and it was then that he claims to have seen slaughtered rats on the cutting board!
Of course, we were thoroughly disgusted with it all. And of course, this doesn’t necessarily prove that we ate rats as well, but, I digress, all signs do point in that direction.
Apparently, the guy screamed at them all, then left immediately to go back down to the city.
As I was writing this article, I got to thinking that maybe rats were a normal thing for them to be eating. After all, Fijians were cannibals until 1867. At least rat is better than that! So I did some quick research and found this article that talks about a specific festival in India where rats are still the centerpiece. I found this interesting because Fiji is heavily populated by Indians. So maybe it did make sense to them to be serving it to us.
The guy that we spoke with felt that it was just a way for them to make a cheap meal so that they could make more money. This, of course, could also be the case.
Either way, as I read more of the article, I saw that rats can be eaten in many other countries as well:
Rats are eaten regularly in Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, parts of the Philippines and Indonesia, Thailand, Ghana, China and Vietnam, says Grant Singleton, from the International Rice Research Institute in the Philippines.
So while some think of rats as disgusting vermin that are infected with any number of diseases, there are others who truly appreciate them. In fact, the article also said that:
Rodent meat is the most delicious and best meat they can imagine!
So there you go! I bet you learned something today. No matter how far or wide we travel in this world, there is always some culture doing something that you never would have thought possible.
Thanks so much for reading about the time that I (likely) ate rat. I would like to thank EllenEastwood for her article “I Still Struggle With What I Ate In Peru” which pulled this memory out of the depths of my brain. If you are curious about what Ellen ate, click below:)
What is the strangest thing that you ever ate while traveling? Maybe we can turn this into an unofficial prompt!
Tagging fellow travelers who may be interested Adrienne Beaumont 🇦🇺 |Anne Bonfert |Kim Baker|Barb Dalton 🇺🇦 | Erika Burkhalter | Gerald Sturgill | Scott-Ryan Abt|Linda Ng | Ronald Smit | Robert Knight | Sandy Maximus | Sara Burdick | Iva Ursano | Sh*t Happens - Lost Girl Travel | JoAnn Ryan | Bernie Pullen | Tiani Travels | Osan Fernando | Sam Millichap | Nishan Fuard | Mulan | Gerad Carrier | TRAVEL STORIES BY GABE | Malky McEwan | Darren Weir | B.R. Shenoy I’m sure I forgot many. Sorry!
Thank you to Gerald for publishing this in Digital Global Traveler!
Happy travels!
xo Jill
Article Reference:
Hi there, we are 2 Canadians, Jill and Chris from Artistic Voyages. We have been nomadic since 2017 living in numerous different countries, and experiencing the life and diversity of our planet on the ground and firsthand. We paint FREE murals in exchange for accommodation. Check us out on Ko-fi!
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