I never thought I would do this

I was invited to have a snack after work with five of my female Cambodian colleagues. The woman who invited me asked if I had ever eaten a baby egg. What she meant was had I ever eaten a fertilized, boiled duck egg with a nearly-developed embryo inside. I had not tried a balut in the Philippines and did not intend to sample Pong tea khon now. After Len reassured me that there would be other things to eat, I said I would come along.

We drove away from KAPE on five motor scooters; it felt like being in a ride with the Hells Angels and some of these are real angles. We pulled up at an outdoor restaurant and parked our motor scooters alongside the other 20 or so already there. It looked like a Honda used-scooter lot.

We found a table and someone ordered in Khmer. Shortly a bowl with eight slightly gray-looking duck eggs appeared along with a plate of leaves and slices of lime and very fine ground pepper.

When you don't know what to do, be slow and wait to see what others do. This approach has served me well in Morocco and other places, and it worked here. The women each took an egg and placed it in the little egg cup. They tapped the top end of the egg with a spoon to crack it open.

By this time Len had placed an egg in a cup in front of me. As I held the egg to crack the shell, I realized it was cooked, because it was HOT. While I was slowly tapping the top of mine, Len open hers. I am sure I grimaced; the color is a nasty looking grayish black. I thought "I don't know if I can eat this…"

As my colleagues began spooning little bits out to eat, I decided to give it a try. "It won't kill me". I mixed lime juice and pepper and put a little of that inside the egg. "Ok here goes". There was not really much flavor except the pepper and the texture was just like a hardboiled egg. I ate slowly, I was wondering if I would have to avoid feathers and bones, but I was lucky, the chick was not that developed.

After the Pong tea kho, there was a tasty salad of cucumber, ginger and other vegetables, dressed with a little vinegar. One of my colleagues told me that if you eat much of it, you will be very thirsty later. After I had eaten about half of the salad, the waitress brought a bowl containing what looked to be marbles on skewers. They turned out to be tiny sausages. They were good, but so small. Then came a bowl of thin slices of meat on skewers, with the meat skewered through the long thin pat so it would cook quickly.

Everything was GREAT! Now I can say I have eaten a baby egg (balut).