Foodivore's Cambodian pick

The food in Cambodia up until now has been nice but it took a French chef to deliver the best Cambodian food so far. We believe much of the food is 'dumbed' down for the tourist palate, mostly that of Japanese, Chinese and Koreans who flock here. With a free night on our hands and with the assistance of the interweb we discovered Cuisine Wat Damnak. With a dark rain cloud heading our way we step up the pace to find our dinner location...sadly going the wrong way and being stuck in the downpour. Arriving finally at dinner completely drenched (Tracey was not quite sure the value of blow drying her hair and dressing nicely for dinner, oh well), we were handed towels and menus. 

A couple of cocktails to begin, a Kaffir Lime and Lemon Basil Mojito and a Purple Dragon Fruit Sangria, things are looking up. The menu is a six course degustation. First course an amuse-bouche of a small pan fried fish, we were desperately hoping not the fish that had fed on Tracey's feet the day prior...they were about the same size.  The rest of the menu is below, the pork with crispy shank was particularly delicious but everything was fabulous, including the bottle of French wine (Pouilly-Fuisse). We hadn't had any wine in Cambodia as it is cheaper to drink cocktails (hardship).

We were told the names of the fruits offered as post-dessert, wish we wrote them down. They were presented with a salt(lime salt?)chilli/palm sugar mixture that variously emphasised/offset/complemented the fruits themselves.......one of which, by itself, was the eating equivalent of the notorious "cement mixer" cocktail. It completely dries out your mouth, thankfully we had wine to re-moisture.

Our research wasn't particularly thorough. Turns out that the chef has quite a long (12 year) and distinguished record in Cambodia, having been instrumental in spreading the word about local cuisine. We had a brief chat after dinner with him, but business was booming (justly so) and he was needed in the kitchen. We hope to get in touch later for some tips - especially the pork and the fish dishes.

Sweaty Templtations

We kicked off our travels in the Siem Reap area with a trip to BCCB, an animal rescue and breeding centre, reached via an hour or so of oddly self-regulating traffic from Siem Reap. There was no petting, and none of our Grail Critters were present which might be an encouraging sign that they're doing OK. These would have included a pangolin and the slow loris (Google this if you don't know what this is, cutest critter ever). We did get to see some Indochinese Silver Langurs, one of which was very very young indeed.

After that though, time to hit the Temples. First up, Banteay Srei: the oldest, and smallest, in the district. Lovely coloured stone. Shame it was so beltingly hot. This is supposed to be the wet season, the only thing wet is us, as the sweat pours off us.

After a stop for lunch (we were all amoked-out, so went for simpler stuff) it was on to Bayon, the Temple of the Four Smiling Buddhas. As any fule kno, it's actually just the one Buddha with four aspects. Utterly impressive, and that's what we imagine the Korean and Chinese tourist hordes were also saying.

Something we've discovered this trip is the Krama, a cotton scarf that you keep wet to cool you down, which you need visiting the temples as you have to cover your shoulders and upper legs as a show of respect, very modest but also very hot.

....proportions may be misleading, but this isn't a smiling Buddha:

The crew: Anne, Grant, Tracey, Andrew, Hannah, Rebecca, Ann-Marie, Colin, Val, Noel.

Below: not part of the crew, but we would have welcomed ellies any day 😃. Sadly they have been hunted to almost extinction in this region so we had to settle for stone.

Enough temple-culture (to say nothing of sweating) for the day, we headed back to Siem Reap to seek out dinner and cold beverages. More temples tomorrow.

Siem Reap...ing the rewards

A short flight from Phnom Penh we escape the chaos to Siem Reap, home of Angkor Wat. For our first afternoon we have a range of options: quad biking, zip lining or a cooking class. Tracey having done the first two just a couple of months ago in Costa Rica, we opt for a Cambodian cooking class.

Before donning our chef hats and aprons we walk through the local market to familiarise ourself with the produce.  We are hoping that the chef purchased his ingredients much earlier in the day than the items festering in the 36oC heat and humidity, the flies certainly thought the meat items looked okay. 

Chef required that we get in uniform. Pretty snappy, huh?

The first course, rice paper rolls. Okay, we've made these before - but we did learn that softening them in cold, rather than hot, water makes them tear less.

Second course: fish amok, the ubiquitous dish of Cambodia. We'd been a bit underwhelmed by the various examples we'd sampled, and even though this was better it was still pretty plain. We have plans to razz it up a bit back home though, by introducing the inexplicably-omitted garlic and chilli we believe it needs.

Third course: caramelised ladyfinger bananas with passionfruit and honey. This was pretty good, but will be improved with rum in the future.

We're now qualified in elementary Khmer cooking.

On the way back to our hotel, Tracey made a second meal: this time, of herself, for little fish that like to nibble on human feet. Apparently not as horrifying as she and Noel, one of our tour group, give the impression of.

Palaces and pagodas

Two very different sides of Cambodia, having visited the mass graves of the Killing Fields this morning, the afternoon was the Royal Palace. Here opulence is in abundance. Gold is everywhere, with highlights of diamonds, marble, jade and emerald. On that note, it met the requirements to be a Palace, having its very own Temple of the Emerald Buddha (aka Silver Pagoda). It also contains a gold Buddha that was Andrew's weight in gold, much shinier than Andrew.

It is difficult to reconcile with the extreme poverty just outside the gates. Much of the population live in hovels, young children are sent out at night to support their families by selling wares on the street. 

The king does reside in this palace and was there during our visit. We don't get to view his residence, just the many pagodas, dancing halls, temples, elephant mounting building (yep, need one of those). The platform to the right of the building below is where you would get onto your gold adorned howdah atop your elephant.

Having been 39oC with 80% humidity, a late afternoon of cocktails in/by the pool was in order. Tomorrow we fly to Siem Reap.

Confronting Cambodia

Arriving in Cambodia we were struck by the absolute chaos. We liken it to a large flock of birds, they move in all and any direction yet never seeming to collide. Young toddlers balance precariously on the front of scooters that zigzag in and out of streaming traffic where there appears to be no road rules. There were no limits to what was deemed acceptable to put on the back of ones scooter: 50 chickens, 5 people...a bar fridge.

We meet our tour group, an eclectic group of Irish, Scots and Australians (originally English). We had been told today might be confronting, it was. We started the day visiting Sleng Genocide Museum (S_21). This was a former school transformed into a torture camp during the Pol Pot regime.

Hard to believe this happened in our lifetime. 3 million Cambodians were killed merely for being educated. very few people survived, a couple of these we met today. They were very small children at the time but vividly recall their ordeal. Our tour guide for the day lost most of his family during this time.

People were tortured to give up the names of their family and friends who might have likewise been educated. They were given promises of government positions before taken off to the "Killing Fields" to be slaughtered and buried in mass graves, our next stop.

Our moral compass is inadequate, or perhaps inadequately tuned, to clearly think through this history. What constitutes justice? Is that actually worth pursuing, when the cost ($200M and counting, to try five people through the courts) is so high and could meet so many other needs? Perhaps the Buddhist view, trusting karma to mete justice, would be comforting. But we aren't Buddhists, and find ourselves conflicted by competing impulses. In some ways, confronting our own morals seems as hard as facing the facts of the past. 

Our guide today was exactly the same age as Andrew. For him, ages 6-10 were forced labour and witnessing terror. We marvelled at his equilibrium as he described the horrors. When I asked him about the challenge of talking about this every day, he conceded that there are moments when he literally cannot talk.

S_21 was just one of more than 150 such camps run by the Khmer Rouge in the mid 70's where men, women and children were tortured before being killed, either there or trucked to the 'Killing Fields'. If we thought this had been emotional, visiting the location where so many have been slaughtered and buried in mass graves was the next level again. Here we saw the evidence of bones and clothing, more of which is revealed after every rainfall, washing away their dirt cover. The clear brutality of what occurred here is evident. Even on the paths you walk are shards of bone, teeth and clothing of those murdered. We won't go into vivid detail of some some of the stories told but we find it difficult to understand how this happened in our lifetime.

......but what about the food?

Having had a hard morning of sightseeing and no luck purchasing a cool beer between the hot afternoon hours of 2-5pm, we jump in another tuk-tuk and head to Distil, a bar on the 63rd floor of State Tower. We'd been recommended the Sky Bar (64th floor), but with a thunderstorm clearly brewing being inside seemed prudent.

Theatre is part of cocktail magic, and impressive as Tracey's "Pandora's Box" was, the "Genie in a Bottle" (aged rum, creme de cacao, maple syrup & cigar smoke) was the star of the show.

Some fine Normandy oysters added to the occasion 😀 A couple of cocktails and nibbles each cost more than our two nights accommodation but worth it for the theatrical experience.

Breakfast is often an insight into local culture, and we were mightily impressed at the tom yum and green curries that were offered to us.

Looking for a way to chill out and soothe tired feet, we hopped on a ferry to the top of the line - Nonthaburi - nearby which we scoped out a most agreeably tourist-free market. 

There were some confronting produce items, not the pigs ears and tails below but the live turtles, baby eels and frogs...okay, we've eaten frog and eel but the turtles were definitely Something Else.

We were occasionally disappointed with our inability to consume sufficient food to try all of the tempting delights we saw. For the Inca trail we trained by climbing mountains, perhaps we should have been training our stomach for this experience.

Next destination, on to Phnom Penh, Cambodia.

One night in Bangkok

Twelve hours can feel like a world away. Having gone from a Canberra winter morning of just 2oC we arrive in Bangkok at 35oC, feels like 41oC.  It was an un eventful flight, with an uneventful taxi ride to arrive an our unconventional hotel, Inn-a-Day.  The rooms are named after hours of the day, we are in 7am. It is quirky to say the least. French industrial, warehouse inspired, funky fish themed room. The shower is literally in the centre of the room and is a blue glassed fish tank looking feature that separates the space. The bedroom is a loft bed up step stairs, with space to crawl only. We do have our own balcony and if it wasn't airconditioned inside and a living sauna outside, we may have spent more than 2 seconds on it. It does have a view of the Temple of Dawn across the river, sadly it is currently covered in scaffold. Having had a long day of travel, we had an unexceptional dinner and went to bed early.

Our hotel is just across the road from the Temple of the Reclining Buddha, our first destination of the day. I don't know how they came up with this name but it has a giant gold reclining Buddha :-) 

The temple grounds have a amazing array of temples and statues.

Next door is the Grand Palace. We'd strolled down the road around the 20ft high walls in search of the entrance. The signs along the wall advise caution of 'wily' strangers trying to divert you from the entrance to other tourists option that they coincidentally have transport in which to take you. We found one such 'wily' stranger trying to send us in all directions. Not deterred, we found our way to the hordes entering the Palace.

We hadn't really thought it through, so were a little surprised that a Palace tour doesn't include some of the things we'd expected, such as a visit to the Throne Room with a chance for a quick sit & pic, the Royal gym, and so on. Rather, it's a meander around numerous buildings that any self-respecting Palace requires (eg Temple of the Emerald Buddha, golden reliquary, scale model of Angkor Wat, etc). We mixed it with the crowds (it felt like half of China was on vacation there all at once), and saw some pretty neat stuff. A lot of gold stuff.

We'd planned for lunch, somewhat characteristically, miles and miles away at a place called Or Tor Kor market. Naturally, we tried walking first. While not a mistake, per se, after some time of wading through crowds and melting like lit candles we decided it was tuk tuk time. The breeze as we were navigated through the crazy traffic was welcome, but had nothing on the blessed Bangkok sky rail. We rate the air con on the trains as 11 out of 10, and quite seriously contemplated just riding around for a few hours to cool down. We may still be on that train if it wasn't for the pangs of hunger and excitement of an exotic food market.

Having found the market there was a short moment of panic when we found just produce stalls, a concern as not only they were mostly closed but also we don't have a kitchen...though the giant prawns did look delicious. Thankfully at one end of this market was a large array of food stands where they will cook food to order. A crispy pork rice and Pad Thai, both more than acceptable at the lofty price of around $2 each.

Back on the airconditioned train, prolonging our reprieve from the heat, we took the scenic route back to the hotel, involving a short ferry ride on the final leg. Having walked up thirst, Andrew attempted to purchase a cold take-away beer to have back in our room. Bars are hard to come by in Bangkok. Having found a 7-Eleven that sold beer, we were foiled at the cash register when a sign was pointed to advising us that alcoholic beverages could not be puchased between 2 and 5pm. Cue profound cultural bemusement.

Equally bemusing is that cocktails are cheaper than wine.....but more on that later.