When it comes to food, I’ll pretty much eat anything. My stomach has been known to become sentient, forcing me to uncontrollably gorge on anything remotely edible.

There are few foods that I outright dislike, but this Icelandic dish pushed me to my gastronomic limits. It’s not that this food is composed of strange internal organs or that it’s been cooked in a particularly offensive way.. Actually, when I describe it, the food sounds perfectly benign and quite tasty: smoked trout.

Smoked trout! Why would anyone hate a bit of smoked trout? It’s a fairly standard food, nothing particularly worrying about it. But when you taste it, you may as well start checking if you have emphysema because this Icelandic delicacy tastes like cigarettes.

Yep, cigarettes. As soon as you open the vacuum sealed pack of smoked trout, a waft of tobacco fills the air. Tearing the rubbery pink flesh off with my fingers, each bite leaves the lingering taste of smoky regret. I don’t know what smoking methods these “chefs” are using, but the flavor is so potent that a cigarette scent is stained permanently on my fingers.  

The taste is so offensive, that I would rather take up smoking than endure another bite of this delicacy. There is no sauce or condiment that you could add to this smoked trout to mask it’s odor. Be warned travelers to Iceland, be warned.  

Live octopus is somewhat of a delicacy in Korea. The freshness of those flapping tentacles as they slide down your throat is a uniquely Korean experience, though definitely not for the faint of heart. Unfortunately, when a friend of mine from Seoul offered to take me to try live octopus, that was the image in my mind; giant tentacles flailing about in my mouth, sticking to the insides of my cheeks, struggling to prevent being swallowed to the pits of my stomach hell.

I’d read a little bit about eating live octopus in Seoul before, none of them were positive. I had heard one story of a guy who suffocated due to the tentacles suctioning to the walls of his throat, choking him. I read another story about a woman who attempted to eat an octopus live, only for it to ejaculate in her mouth (this turned out to be a squid not octopus). Needless to say, I had my reservations. I also thought about the cruelty of it all (something which I’m still conflicted on). Was it cruel to eat something alive or is that just the ultimate in natural behaviour? And while I would definitely object to eating any land animal alive, it seemed okay for an octopus somehow.

In any case, my friend explained to me that the octopus would be sort of dead. She told me that you don’t actually eat the octopus alive in its entirety, rather they chop it up for you and serve it to you on a plate still wriggling. Brilliant! It’ll be dead and in bite size chunks!

So there we were, at a fish market in Seoul, walking through the stalls selling every kind of sea food imaginable. Most of the fish I couldn’t name, there were shapes of shell fish I’d never seen before, phallic-shaped pulsing organisms and of course, the octopus, slithering away in its temporary watery abode. My friend selected an octopus that she thought was the freshest and before long, we were taken to a partnership restaurant where we sat down for a feast.

A few anxious moments later, it came out. There, in front of me, was an octopus, expertly cut up into small pieces. The tentacles had been separated from the main body and cut up into 3cm long chunks. They wriggled and wreathed on the plate, sticking to every surface they could attach themselves to. I looked at it and immediately, began freaking out. The slime, the liveliness of it all and those strangulation/ejaculation stories I’d read about previously were all right in front of my mind. But I decided, that I was here and I needed to go for it.

The first thing I noticed when I went to pick a tentacle with my chopsticks was how difficult it was. The tentacle stuck to the plate with such a force that I had really had to give a good tug to remove it. Tentacle on chopstick, I dipped it into some sauce. As I lowered it into the sauce, it almost seemed to coat itself as it wriggled through the mixture of chilli and oil. Self-saucing suddenly took on a whole new meaning.

Then the moment of truth, the plunge. I looked at it for a few moments and just tried not to think about it too much. I had a game plan. First, I had to yank it off the chopstick with my teeth as it seemed to be stuck to the wood. Then, I just had to chew, chew, chew. The more I chewed, the less likelihood of any flailing about in my mouth. The more I chewed, the less likely I would choke to death. And off I went…the result?

Not too bad!

The first few chews were not fun, mostly from the visual factor and the sliminess. But once I got going, I realized it was actually the most tender piece of octopus I had ever eaten. It had the freshness of the ocean and unlike a lot of octopus I’d eaten in the past, it was not chewy. I at more, the grossness of it all diminishing every time. But, I grew to ‘appreciate’ it. While I can say that I didn’t ‘love’ it, the taste itself was quite enjoyable. And what’s better, I didn’t choke to death and it didn’t ejaculate in my mouth.

Meanwhile though, one of my traveling companions decided to eat the head of the octopus. This was something I definitely wasn’t game for and I’m glad I didn’t do it. The eating of the head took about 5minutes of constant chewing, which, half way through, involved an unpleasant crunch when the eye was bitten and broken into….pleasant.

I will say this though, I probably wouldn’t do it again. Before going to the restaurant, my friend said that it would be cut up, which I took to mean that it would be essentially dead, and the wriggling of the detached tentacles would be a result of post-death reflexes. After thinking about it some more, it seemed to me that it really was ‘live’ octopus.

Even though they did cut it, the head/body remained in tact, which pretty much meant that I had just paid to have an octopus limbs ripped off while it watched me eat them. Having said that, I have seen a few places that chop up the head as well so that’s good I guess. Hmm, clearly something that I need to think about more. 

For more on the live octopus, including how to actually go about ordering it, check out the South Korea Food section

Growing up in the western world, nudity is something that’s embarrassing. We grow up feeling self conscious about our bodies, wondering if we’re too fat or too thin. As guys, we’re insecure about our biceps and other things related to our manhood. But in Korea, it’s no biggie, and the more you get naked, the more you’ll feel the same.

Jimjilbangs are public bath houses in Korea, and are a pretty popular way to relax and unwind after a stressful day at work. They’re gender segregated spas, with communal lounge and sauna areas. You can spend the whole day there, ordering drinks and eating icecream, watching TV, unclogging your blackened pores, getting a massage or just relaxing in a hot pool, all while naked. Nudity, in the gender segregated areas, is a requirement and you can’t enjoy the sublimity of the hot baths without all your flesh exposed. For an outsider coming in, it can be a bit of a confronting situation, both being nude and being around so much naked flesh, but it’s also one of the most relaxing things to do.

Once you get over the initial hesitation and the shock of dozens of wangs flapping quietly around, you’ll find yourself relaxing more, both inside and out. The hardest thing is taking off your underwear for the first time. There’s hesitation, you fiddle around arranging things in your locker, you pretend you left something somewhere and you awkwardly try to avert your eyes from unsavoury sights. You wonder if you can really do it, then you tell yourself ‘fuck it, im getting naked’. You proudly strip off the last shackles of oppression and proudly strut out with your head held high and your willy hanging low.

And it really is a liberating experience. When you realise that everyone else looks the same as you do, in all colours, shapes and sizes, it’s relaxing. I’ll be the first to admit that I am a little vain. I worry about what I wear, I exercise and eat healthy so my body looks right and I’m obsessed with my hair. But being naked, that feeling is gone. I’m hanging out with a whole bunch of other naked Koreans who aren’t muscley and toned, have bits of fat hanging out their guts, hair wrangled every which way and yes, manhoods that aren’t worth describing. For me, it was a feeling that appearance didn’t really matter. All that did matter was the amazing spa jets massaging my sore back; the warmth of the pools soaking my tired feet. What’s more amazing about the experience is that Koreans do this as a norm.

Friends will go to jimjilbangs to hang out, even washing each other in the buff. Fathers will bring their sons, mothers, their daughters, all in the nude. Of course, there’s always that huge juxtaposition that Korea is also one of the plastic surgery capitals of the world. And there’s also the fact that I’m a westerner that’s coming to this experience with a completely different mindset. But I don’t care, I felt more comfortable in my body than I ever had been and no amount of juxtapositions can take that away!

My advice for anyone wanting to try a jimjilbang but are a bit nervous, just do it. Do not let the shackles of a nudeless society oppress you any longer! And though going with a friend may seem very off putting, it doesn’t have to be so remember that.

For more, read my guide on jimjilbang etiquette. 

Welcome to Stranger on Foot, the new website/blog that attempts to give some helpful tips for the budding traveler. There's lots of stuff in guidebooks, but sometimes they can be a) overwhelming, b) overly positive about things you know are a bit shit or c) give you painfully inadequate directions to get to places.

So I'm trying to fill in some of those gaps. Stay with me, it might take me a while to remember some of the places I've been to but I've started off with South Korea. Hopefully, I'll have Hong Kong up in the next month or two or three...

But in the interrim, I'll update this blog as much as I can with travel experiences worth checking out and some cultural shocks you might want to watch for.

If you want to contact me, you can catch me on twitter (@nobyleong). I love talking travel! Or, to find out more about me and my ventures, you can follow my science blog, The Other Side of Science, which is also on twitter (@ososcience)

Til then future friends!