Food Inglorious Food

Blah, blah, blah, waterfalls; blah, blah, blah, diving; blah, blah, blah, motorbikes... OK, so I'm a horribly spoilt shit who doesn't appreciate what he's got in relation to the rest of the known world, who are currently sat under a miasma of vapid grey skies in England. I've been in Vietnam for the past week and a half and have actually found it fairly uninspiring. I miss Cambodia and its ramshackled charm and beaming locals and the Vietnamese, so far, have come across as cold and unfriendly in comparison. It's said that 0.5% of first-time visitors to Vietnam ever come back and I'm beginning to see why.

I really enjoyed Saigon, with its cracked and peeling walls scrambling at a chance of modernity and its pools of motorbikes which ebb and flow in time with the traffic lights, but Nha Trang was overcast and overpriced and Dalat was chilling in both temperature and attitude so I'm back on the beach in search of something more... salty; something, I mean, with a bit more flavour.

While I settle my ungrateful bot-bot into a sunnier clime and disposition, I thought I'd discuss something very personal with you - drawing inspiration from the lovely Alex and her far more professional and, some would argue, better blog, where you can see a post on the same subject(http://www.alexinwanderland.com/) This has been an ongoing issue and I'm actually surprised I haven't written about it until now, but anyone who knows me at all will know there's this thing about me; something everyone wants to change. OK, so there's a plethora of attributes people want to alter about me, but principally and for the purposes of this blog post, it's the fact I'm a fussy eater.

It's a flaw which has followed me all my life and now, at the age of 34, I've just about given up thinking that I'll grow into it. I've finally accepted this character defect about myself, but that's not even the half of it - it's the rest of polite society who seem steadfastly unable to do the same and therein lies the problem. You might wonder, That's all well and good, Andrew, and might I add, your hair's looking terrific these days, but where does this fit into a blog supposedly chronicling your philanthropic Asian invasion? And well you might. Actually, being out here, and especially reaching the various coastlines that I have, has given the normals ample opportunity to do what they do best; attempt to force some kind of change in my habits. Come on, just try it. One clam, You're never gonna get it so fresh!, but here's the thing - I actually don't want it at all.

If you're a vegetarian, that's fine; a Muslim or Jew, I can understand that; but if your aversion to specific food types stems simply from personal taste - well, you're about 1,000-times worse than Pol Pot with all the sophistication of a small town tittie bar. It's true to say that to be a fully grown adult human is an impossible task while simultaneously being a fussy eater. What kind of boorish yobo refuses asparagus spears or removes the salad from a burger before eating it? Well, me. I do. I just want to eat the food I like without the chastisement of the whole greens-eating planet. Can this happen? Fat chance.

What people don't understand - and trust me, I'm not looking for sympathy here, just a chance to put over my (or our; I know there are others out there) side of the story - is that being a fussy eater is no picnic. Well, certainly not one with scotch eggs in it; gross. It's embarrassing, humiliating, depressing, demoralising, excruciating and downright awkward to suffer from this affliction, but what makes it worse is the almost religious fervour the normals adopt in trying to convert you. As soon as they see that you're different, they become what I can only describe as foodie Jehovah's Witnesses in their quest to redeem you. Everyone wants to get involved; everyone wants to tell you about how their parents, wouldn't let me down from the table until I'd finished everything; remind you how much you're missing out with overt displays of satisfaction and delight while tucking into that day's nutritional salvation that you've passed on. Sometimes even your morals are called into question - How can you not eat it? People in (insert the third world country de jour here) are starving and you're just leaving all that food. You don't know how lucky you are. It never ends.

My question to you normals is this: why does it bother you so much? It's instinctive human nature to question the different and poke them with a stick - a celery stick in this instance - but when you can be pretty much 100% sure of what reaction you'll get, isn't that just outright discrimination? Yeah, that's right, I'm bringing out the race card because my experience bears all the hallmarks of a textbook case. I'm part of a different group of people; I can't change this thing about me; I'm constantly told to behave in a certain way just to fit in and the idea of simply leaving me to be myself is completely unheard of. In fact, the relentless attempts to muscle me into doing something I don't want to do puts me very much in mind of what life must have been like in Hitler's Germany. So, I hope you're happy, food Nazis - I'll see you in The Hague.