The Martian in My Meal

Most of the food I ate in Cambodia and Vietnam was delicious. I loved Vietnamese pho, or noodles (though I didn't love my inability to pronounce the word, which is something like "fuh" but high and possibly falling tone), I loved Vietnamese beef dishes (strange since I usually avoid anything beef in the States), and I ate a tomato and chicken and pineapple soup in Cambodia that destroyed my desire to eat anything else ever again, ever (which might be a good basis for a dieting company).

There was one notable exception to the rule, though. At a small noodle stand in Cambodia, where I had ordered a seemingly harmless bowl of chicken noodle soup, I found an alien in my noodles.

Now, before you think I'm needlessly exaggerating for the sake of the story, like how I claim that the Three Nephites once rescued me and Alea from being lost near Sandy, and how the "alien" was probably just a squid, take a look.


What the heck is that thing? Now imagine you find that in your soup. What's worse, it was buried under the noodles, so that I had eaten about 2/3 of the bowl by the time I stumbled upon the extraterrestrial at the bottom.

What did I do about it, you may ask? Well, I'm no Sigourney Weaver: I shrieked. Then I fished it out of my soup and took a picture. Then I finished the noodles. Hey, touring Cambodia makes a girl hungry.