Rising food prices in Cambodia has a particularly strange consequence: it makes rat meat more popular as inflation has put the price of other meat out of the reach of poor people!
(Photo: REUTERS/Chor Sokunthea)Spicy field rat dishes with garlic thrown in have become particularly popular at a time when beef costs 20,000 riel a kg.
Officials said rats were fleeing to higher ground from flooded areas of the lower Mekong Delta, making it easier for villagers to catch them.
"Many children are happy making some money from selling the animals to the markets, but they keep some for their family," Ly Marong, an agriculture official, said by telephone from the Koh Thom district on the border with Vietnam.
I'm glad that YOU thought it was neat, too, Alex!