Bats, or an Update on Khmer Cuisine

I’ve been having a bit of a bat problem at my apartment. And no, neither baseballs nor cricket balls nor shuttlecocks have been flying through my window. I’m talking about the most feared of mammals, the disease vector that we call bat.

It’s been a learning process trying to figure out exactly what they are doing and how long they are spending on my walkway. Luckily, they are not on the inside of the apartment. My landlord and I realized that they aren’t living there, because it’s too light during the day, and they would not be able to sleep. We know that they are fruit bats, because I find new, 3-in diameter fruit seeds on my walkway every morning, next to a pile of guano. What we don’t know, however, is how to get rid of them.

Bats can primarily give you two diseases. One is rabies. Most rabies cases in the US each year are caused by bats. I am not too afraid of rabies from the bats, because the only times I’ve been able to catch a glimpse them, it has been at night, and they flew away as soon as they felt the vibrations emanating from my footsteps.

The infection I am worried about, however, is Histoplasmosis. According to the Yolo County, California, Animal Control website, histoplasmosis is “a fungal infection causing a flu-like respiratory disease. It is contracted by breathing dust stirred up from areas where bat or bird droppings accumulate. The symptoms of histoplasmosis can become severe, and if left untreated can lead to death.” Anyway, histoplasmosis doesn’t occur in California, but in hot, humid climates that also happen to be dusty—CAMBODIA, on my unpaved street, especially as we are going into the dry season.

When you do a google search for “bat eradication” (I’m sure all of you have searched for this!), sites come up talking about the “humane” way of getting rid of them, creating a one-way door out of tarp. The problem is, they are not inside my house. Also, all we want to do is kill them! I bought two bottles of Raid and had my landlord’s helper spray it on all the surfaces we expected the bats to be living on, but the Raid dissipated too quickly and the bats are still here. Does anybody have any ideas????

Since the bat problem was not resolved, my landlord tried to convince me that there was no reason to worry. He said that our helper saw them, and that they in fact were not bats but “Chreung,” and that chreung were harmless. He said he couldn’t explain the difference, but that I should ask my Cambodian colleagues. So I did.

Response from my friend and colleague Sonyouth:

“Bats and chreung are the same. But one lives only in the provinces, I don’t remember which.”

Response from Seng, the IT guy at the office:

“They are similar to each other, but you cannot eat bats. You can eat chreung.”

Great! Then I shant worry about chreung because I can eat them! They must be as healthy as a well-fed cheetah!

Either way, we should kill them so we can eat them, Eating chreung is probably a safer bet than tarantulas, actually.

Anyway, Sonyouth followed up on the chreung dilemma for me. He text-messaged me today, writing that the direct translation of Chreung was “Big Bat.” In fact, these bats have a wingspan that is about a meter in diameter, much larger than most small bats I’ve ever seen. This also explains the size of the fruit pits they were eating.

I’m still trying to figure out a way to either make them fly away permanently, or kill them and have a grand-olde barbeque this weekend for Water Festival.

A Quasi-Thorough Report on Khmer Cuisine

Cambodia is a place that is both delectable and treacherous for my gastronomical needs. Khmer cuisine, for the most part, is succulent, vibrant, with a burst of divergent flavors in every bite—sweet basil, chilli, peanuts, fish, mint……all in one salad I ate today! I would describe Khmer cuisine as a mix between Chinese and Thai, not quite as spicy or satisfying as Thai food, but every meal I’ve had has been enjoyable. The delight of eating Asian food is sharing many dishes. Unfortunately, because I’ve eaten most meals alone, I’ve been quite limited in how many different dishes I have tried. Last night, for the first time, I ate Khmer food with two people, and in comparison it was a veritable feast—spicy papaya salad, a pumpkin and mushroom stir-fry with tamarind, basil, and chili, and the Khmer Specialty Fish Amok (but we had Tofu Amok). Amok is a thick coconut milk/peanut curry, wrapped in banana leaves and steamed. Truly incredible.

So the treacherous part—my allergies. Khmer cuisine uses egg in many, many dishes, but I haven’t had a problem avoiding this. Either way, my newfound egg allergies aren’t life-threatening. My worry is that Khmer cuisine is noted for the use of prahok, a type of fermented fish paste, in many dishes as a flavoring. When prahok is not used, it is likely to be kapik instead, a kind of fermented shrimp paste. I have not eaten any shellfish yet, but I’m constantly scared that kapik will be inserted into a dish of mine and I will die on the table. I always ask if there is any shrimp or shrimp paste, but the rest of my Khmer is so rudimentary that the possibility of a slip-up on my pronunciation or our mutual understanding is always in the back of my mind.

The one night I went out with my Cambodian colleague a week ago, I told him that I was allergic to shellfish, but his friends wanted to go to a seafood restaurant so away we went. I sat there while they ate fried rice with shrimp, roasted crabs, and other shellfish. At one point, they told me, “Stop staring at the stars [ie get your head out of the clouds] and start eating because soon the food will all be gone.” I wasn't daydreaming, only thinking about whether even being in such close vicinity to it was fine. Whether someone’s sumptuous bite into a juicy shrimp would squirt into my mouth and I would go into anaphylactic shock. Ok, I was being neurotic, but whatever. Well, I was fine, I ate some nice roasted fish and plain rice, drank my first ever grass jelly drink (a brown-black drink with jelly/bubble-tea-esque clumps at the bottom).

At dinner that night, people from the street came into the restaurant hawking various food products to supplement the meal—you could choose from snails, insects, or roasted tarantulas (a delicacy here). I've been wondering whether I can eat insects and tarantulas, because, like crustaceans, they are arthropods--maybe I should just hold off.

I know, you're saying "OH MY GOD HOW COULD YOU NOT EAT TARANTULAS?!?!?!?!” So it goes.