Eshin Direct

Food Poisoning

Methinks it was food poisoning rather than heat exhausation or prickly heat. Or it could have been a very, very, very mild dose of decompression sickness. Of course, if it was decompression sickness, I should have rushed myself to the hospital to be repressurised immediately. Perhaps I will explode in the next day or so still, but I rather think that the cause of my discomfort these last few days was Hong Kong’s favourite deadly snack - the innocuous looking fish ball.

For those of you unfamiliar with HK cuisine, fish balls, prawn balls, and meat balls, the size of golfballs are popular snack foods for Hong Kong people. You’ll find them bobbing away in oil at street stalls, 7-11’s (yes, UK, they still have ‘em here), and you’ll also find them gracing most cheap, mass mealtimes that have a local flavour to them. They are also shipped in by the truckload at workplaces as locals have “tea time” around 5pm. Great on their own, the best way to have these is from the street vendors who drench them in curry sauce spicy enough to make your balls shrivel.

Yep, I love ‘em, locals love ‘em and expats usually deny eating them. And yes, it’s still the food variety of fishball I’m talking about.

But I suspect that it was this cute looking fishball on the diving trip that got my attention or the attention of my immune system. The week before my mate, el revez, seemed to be complaining of some food allergy after we bbq’d down in Repulse Bay. I think that’s ’cause he had roasted a bucket load of these fishballs over the coals. I hadn’t eaten quite as many as he did that time but I certainly gorged myself on ‘em on Sunday.

I would advise against eating these dodgy looking fishballs since the ones you get in more “sanitary” and “upmarket” places aren’t usually worth your while, and the ones that are worth a bite, usually come from shabbier places. But then again, with no proof, I really can’t point the finger at one fishball or another.