Travelling often means stepping out of your comfort zone and trying new experiences, including local specialities. But before you jump in and sample the strangest foods, here's something to think about. We asked the Lonely Planet staff to spill the beans and tell us their most bizarre food anecdotes, from fried insects to fermented fish, from restaurants in igloos to daredevil aperitifs.
Crunchy snacks, Cambodia
In all my years of travelling I have seen countless stands of local delicacies sold at bus windows, but I will never forget the trays on display in Skuon, Cambodia. In front of my eyes were stacked in large piles of purple tarantulas, their legs twisted. I could have mistaken them for a stringy version of jalebi, a typical Indian sweet. But there was nothing sweet here at all.
As I hesitated in front of the spiders' crispy little legs, I thought about how this dish could have become an integral part of the local cuisine. It is said that during the time of the Khmer Rouge regime in the 1970s, when famine had hit the country, this dish was born out of a need to feed. And by the time the situation improved, the inhabitants had become accustomed to tarantulas. So I tasted two of them, they weren't that bad.
A seafood disaster, Portugal
Shortly before a holiday with my parents became a ban, my 13-year-old self walked into a restaurant in Taviria, Portugal, and ordered a plate of choquinhos à algarvia, or grilled cuttlefish. With the unmotivated arrogance of 1) someone who is not paying and 2) a teenager who thinks he is proving himself navigated by choosing unconventional food. Call it an e-now-look-at-what-I'm-eating mentality. The problem was, when the dish had arrived, I just couldn't eat it. Lovecraftian nightmares manifested before my eyes, reminding me of little rubber monsters I played with as a child. And even in death, these beings resisted my fork with unstoppable vigour. It may have been my imagination, but I am sure I also remember a faint cry exhaled as I ate my first and only bite.
Almost fruit, Zimbabwe
During a safari in Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe, the guide told my sister and I about a regional speciality we were supposed to taste: mopane worms. These caterpillars, from which the butterfly known as the pear saturnia arises, feed on the mopane tree, from which they take their name, and the locals strip them of their innards and let them dry in the sun to make them into crunchy snacks.
That night, the hotel buffet served a feast of traditional flavours, including fried crocodile tail, buffalo stew and, of course, mopane verbs. We tasted one, just to do our duty, but then my sister took a big handful with which she garnished her plate.
Thinking that she liked it, I said nothing, but her enthusiasm soon faded. We realised in fact that she had not heard the guide's explanation properly and thought that the 'worms' were in fact the fruit of the mopane tree and had therefore unknowingly covered her dinner with insects. Several desserts were served to rinse his mouth.
The cocktail at KO, Thailand
During a lovely evening spent relaxed on the beach at Ko Tao, admiring a picture-postcard sunset, I was disturbed by a dull noise. It was a coconut bigger than my head, and I know this for a fact because it fell just inches from me. Having actually risked death, I decided that that coconut was mine and cheerfully took it with me to dinner. When the chef saw what I was carrying under my arm her eyes sparkled and she started cutting it up with great zeal and an equally great knife. It turned out that her ex-boyfriend had lost his teeth in a similar accident. That was how she got her revenge, while my friends and I got the best and freshest piña colada I have ever tasted. AnneMarie 1 - coconut 0.
A strange invitation, Azerbaijan
It was with some trepidation that I accepted an invitation to celebrate Norouz, the traditional spring festival, with a dinner in a hut in one of the last communist-style cin villages in Azerbaijan. My enthusiasm waned further when I was told, as we sat down to dinner, that the grapes used for the wine had been crushed by the bare feet of the strangers sitting in front of me. In fact everything around the table, from fleshy vegetables to slices of cheese, had come from the village: or, to be precise, had been imported by the host, John, an Englishman who produced the best Cumberland sausage in all of Azerbaijan. Despite my misgivings, the food was delicious, profusely accompanied by sips of homemade vodka. After dinner we took turns jumping through a bonfire, a gesture that traditionally washes away sins. A symbolic ritual perhaps, but it certainly helped me end the evening with a much more elastic mind.
A controversial national dish, Iceland
I am standing in a farmhouse in a valley between the tranquil Eastfjord and the desolate Highlands, Iceland, eating fermented Greenland shark for breakfast.
Hákarl has a reputation as strong as its smell. Chef Anthony Bourdain describes it as 'the worst, most disgusting, terrible thing I have ever eaten'. The Greenland shark can live up to 500 years and is as big as the great white shark, although it rarely moves faster than 3 km/h. And the meat of this slow giant, which lives in deep, cold waters, is toxic. To make it edible it must be pressed and hung for months.
I would have liked to have tasted some the night before, but we were busy with rope bridges and reindeer. So as soon as it appeared on my plate amidst skyr (a kind of yoghurt), orange juice and the smell of ammonia, I immediately bit into a piece. My cheeks trembled, but it actually tasted better than it smelled: it tasted like sizzling cuttlefish, with a hint of cheese flavour. I took a couple more bites and accompanied them with a few cups of coffee. It's not for everyone and you can't say it's good, but I don't thinkhákarl deserves such a terrible reputation.
Filling up on couscous, Morocco
On the stroke of our 18th birthday, myself and three other friends set off on our first adventure abroad. While everyone left to celebrate the end of exams amidst the festivities of Megaluf, we decided to visit Morocco.
I have never eaten so much couscous: it took me many years to even consider eating it again after those three weeks of eating nothing else.
The most memorable occasion when I ate couscous was at the home of a Berber family in the Atlas Mountains. We watched our smiling hosts, sitting on a mud floor, as they sifted and shook the grains in a very old bowl. That is probably still the best couscous I have ever eaten, but I remember my friends smiling, poorly concealing their upset. I learnt that four people can experience the same thing very differently.
From nose to tail for Dashin, Nepal
On one of my many trips to Kathmandu, Nepal, a friend invited me to his home for the Dashin festival, in which the Hindus honour the goddess Durga and celebrate the victory of good over evil with animal sacrifices and family feasts. It was a great honour for me to be invited, but my smile paled a little when a series of aunts and grandmothers started piling festival specialities onto my plate: sautéed brains, boiled intestines, fried marrow, testicles, egg-filled lungs. As the guest of honour I couldn't refuse, so I had to taste a bit of everything. To make it through I tried not to think about anatomy and concentrate on texture: this is soft, this is chewy. The taste was not bad, but the experience itself was, you could say, really visceral.
Joe Bindloss, Destination Editor for the Indian subcontinent. Follow his tweets at @joe_planet.
In Lapland, pop-up restaurants tend to melt at the end of the season © Gemma Graham / Lonely Planet
An Arctic banquet, Finnish Lapland
When hunger strikes and it is -30°C outside, most people would look for a quiet place to eat something and warm their fingers. But when I was in Saariselkä in Finnish Lapland, I couldn't turn down the chance to eat in an ice restaurant. As soon as I set foot in the igloo with its bluish glow I could still see my breath and I did not dare take off my gloves, or any of my five layers for the duration of the meal. Although all the furniture and even some of the glasses were made of ice, the place was quite cosy and the traditional Arctic feast of creamy fish soup and subsequent reindeer stew completely thawed me out from the inside out. A bit like the restaurant itself, which completely melted with the arrival of spring, ready to be rebuilt the following winter.