" HO CHI MINH CITY (Reuters) - Would you like your crickets deep fried and crispy? Peppered and presented in a neat circle on a bed of green leaves?

Breeders of crickets say the insects have become "finger food for beer drinkers" in an age of increasing prosperity in Vietnam compared with the recent past when they might have been food for the hungry or for wartime soldiers surviving in the jungle.

Businessman Le Thanh Tung raises hundreds of thousands of the flying insects in barrels and sells them to restaurants in Ho Chi Minh City, the Southeast Asian country's largest urban area, or to other breeders in neighboring provinces. "