Malmö Central.

With our American accents, Henry and I butcher the pronunciation, saying ‘Malmo’.

We ask one of the passengers to correct us and find that the ö is actually pronounced as ‘er’.

Malmer?

Though the alphabet is very similar to English, it’s the pronunciation that made us sound like foreigners.

As we left the train station, we arrived at our hotel: Clarion Malmö Live.

It was one of the tallest buildings in the city with a staircase structure that connected the three main buildings.

We dropped off our luggage and went out to ride the electric scooters.

There were so many to choose from: Voi, Bolt, Lime, and Tier.

I never rode an electric scooter before but it felt exhilarating to ride through the streets at high speed by merely pushing down on a button.

It took us ten minutes to get to the pedal boats.

For thirty minutes, we paid 130 Swedish krona.

To our surprise, it was difficult to maneuver and got tiring very fast.

I kept thinking about how I should’ve stretched beforehand as my quads started to get sore.

For fun, we snuck up behind other boats and pedaled faster as if it was a race.

When Henry managed the maneuver stick, he’d move us closer to the ducks to scare them away.

Poor birds flew away in fear of my boat’s evil captain.

We headed back and went to the Disgusting Food Museum which showcased delicacies from around the world.

Some of whose production was discontinued due to contamination and animal abuse.

It was fascinating to learn that disgust is contextual and cultural.

This made sense as my favorite Filipino dish, Diniguan, or pork blood soup would make others want to vomit.

From Chinese mouse wine to juice made from Mongolian sheep eyes, it was shocking to see what people eat to sustain their bodies.

The most disgusting delicacy was Dongyang’s virgin boy eggs.

This was made by boiling eggs in a pot of urine that was collected from school boys.

For hours, the eggs simmer in the urine, and many families in Dongyang love to eat them.

Some of the delicacies I’ve tasted before such as Spam and Balut.

Balut is a Filipino egg with a duck fetus inside.

It scared Henry to learn that people would eat the fetus and that I was one of them.

I told him “don’t knock it ‘til you try it” and that he should close his eyes or eat it in the dark.

After reading the history and production of each delicacy, we headed to the taste section.

Henry and I ate crickets, dung beetles, and a cheese called Stinking Bishop from Britain.

The final part was my favorite as we attempted their spicy chili oil challenge.

There were five different chili oils.

At the third bottle, Henry gave up and started to cry while drinking multiple cups of milk.

Luckily for me, I have a high spice tolerance and was able to demolish the challenge.

While Henry was recovering from the spice, I made friends with other Swedes touring the museum.

We shared a common interest in EDM (electronic music) and they were kind enough to tell us where to go for clubbing.

It was entertaining to see people’s different levels of disgust and spice.

The museum was by far one of the best I’ve been to as I got to look beyond my cultural bias and experience different tastes across the world.