YOU’VE seen them on the street stalls, wondered how anybody could possibly eat them, and, depending on how many drinks you’ve had, you have probably even considered biting into one.

In Thailand, the locals eat all sorts of bugs, including locusts, silkworms, beetles, termites, ants and even scorpions and spiders.

Perhaps it’s their way of getting revenge on those pesky insects that keep us awake at night with their chirruping, and the bities that leave us itching and scratching.

Believe it or not, insects are full of protein, and they are really quite good for you.

Legend has it that a couple of decades ago, a large swarm of locusts was blown clear across the Indian Ocean and started munching on Thai crops.

His Majesty King Bumibol consulted his scientists and told the farmers to start eating the wretched locusts which were eating their crops.

Fair’s fair, even in Buddhist Thailand, and the Thais have been dining on locusts ever since.

All over the country you can buy a bag of tukataen, or fried locusts, with dipping sauce.

They are considered something of a delicacy and the price is increasing to match the demand.

But remember, if you are brave enough to eat a locust, you have to pull off its hind legs before popping it into your mouth because locust legs can be rather prickly.

The rest is nice and crunchy and goes down well with a cold beer.

Another favourite is silk worms.

The life cycle of the silk worm lasts only a couple of months, most of which it spends munching on mulberry leaves.

Once gorged, they spin a cocoon of silk around themselves and go into the pupa stage.

This is when they are harvested.

Silk farmers dump the cocoons into hot water and boil off the silk.

This doesn’t bother the worms as they are undergoing the ‘Big Change’ and inside, they are basically biological soup.

After skimming off the silk, the farmers are left with the pupae which look a bit like slightly grubby Nike shoes about a quarter of an inch long.

Stir them quickly and serve hot.

The outside will be slightly chewy, but the inside will be like a fine egg yolk.
Silkworms make an excellent appetizer.

A lot of the insects eaten in Asia are fried.

To cook them, simply drop them into a saucepan with a little oil, chili and garlic and hold it over the heat, giving the pan an occasional shake to ensure they are evenly done.

When the last one stops kicking, they’re ready to eat.

This is also a good way to eat meng kanoon, those chunky little brown beetles which appear at the beginning of the monsoon season.

Catching them is really easy.

During the day, they burrow into the ground, but at night they come out to feast on foliage.

Shine a strong flashlight onto some bushes and you will easily see their eyes which reflect the light with a golden glow.

Most will make a beeline, or a beetle line, for the light and can be easily harvested.

They take only a couple of minutes to fry, but you have to pull off their wing casing before you eat them because they are hard and have sharp edges.

Swarming termites are another delicacy favoured by the Thais.

They erupt from huge underground nests during the rainy season and come in a variety of sizes, with wing spans up to an inch and a half.

To catch a feed of flying termites, you simply place a bowl of water under the light on your balcony and go to bed.

The termites, thinking that they have seen the moon, will dive straight into the water, where they will be waiting for you when you wake the next morning.

Separate them from their wings, fry them up, and breakfast will be a real taste treat.

If termites don’t make your mouth water, you can always settle for a meal of ants.

Try the Asian red ones.

Apart from anything else, they deserve to be eaten, because they like to drop onto you from trees and plants, and then bite a piece out of you to take back to their nests.

But you need to collect a lot of ants for a good feed, so look for their nests, which are fairly easy to spot hanging from branches.

Take a bucket of water, a stick and a sharp pair of scissors, and carefully position the bucket below the nest, then use the scissors to snip the nest away from the branch, leaving it to drop into the water.

Quickly stir the water with the stick to break up the nest and drown the ants.

Leave it for a while, because even drowning ants have a remarkable ability to bite you.

You will see a lot of little white blobs mixed in with the ants.

These are their eggs which are also very edible, so waste not, want not.

Red ants are best eaten as larp, a Laotian style specialty, which is also found in north eastern Thailand and Cambodia.

Mix the ants with mint, chillies, fish sauce, and lime, and then add course-ground toasted rice.

The whole mess should be chopped up very finely and served with sticky rice.

The result will not be an ‘ant-i climax’.

If you are really adventurous, you can try scorpions and spiders.

Tarantulas have a leg span of up to four inches and live in holes in the ground with edges laced with web designed to catch passing insects.

Expert spider catchers know how to tease the spiders out of their holes and quickly grab them.

The tarantulas are a lot less venomous than their scorpion cousins, and they have plenty of meat on them.

They say the best thing about eating tarantulas is that everybody gets a leg.

Scorpions have less meat and of course an outer carapace, but once cooked they are harmless and can be eaten, sting and all.

Insects and spiders contain a very high ratio of protein to carbohydrates and fat, so if you can get your head around the aesthetics of eating them, you will actually be dining on a very healthy food group.