Showing posts with label beng mealea. Show all posts
Showing posts with label beng mealea. Show all posts

Sunday, 27 November 2011

Cambodia - that's all for now (hic!)

This is the final post from my Cambodia trip photographs. I want to move my blog on to Christmas and things I am making for the festive season (feeling ever so slightly Christmassy!) Plus I have a really exciting Christmas blog coming up next week featuring some bloggers you may know, my first guest-post...eep!

I love food. This is a problem for me in some ways, and why I am on the Weight Watchers program (lost two stone so far - let's forget I put on 5 and a half pounds in one week in Cambodia - I blame the beer entirely!) I wish I could just be all virtuous with food and only eat the quality foods I love, but the fact is I will eat practically anything and often too much of it.
I was intrigued by Cambodian food, and wanted to get straight to the nitty gritty of it, so persuaded my group to eat street-food on our first night. We had had a lot of beer before hand, so they were up for it.




Bun Lay was very keen to encourage us to eat as many traditional dishes as possibly, it was ridiculously cheap and we filled the table with food. Best looking food went to my impressive Amok Curry - pictured above in it's coconut container.


Street food that I wasn't brave enough to try looked like this and was plentiful. Some tongues look pretty scarey enough, maybe it's better if you can't see them whole. Who knows what I will try next year?


After a long 'conversation' involving some sort of sign language, I was able to get myself a Diet Coke - amazing! I fully prepared myself to say goodbye to such things.


And ice-cream...like, really yummy ice-cream. Surprised.


Surprise again by the delicious (understatement) breakfast at My Home Inn in Siem Reap. How was I to know (the guidebooks failed to mention it - twits), that Siem Reap still hangs on to some traditions and FOODS from French Colonnial times, such as baguettes for breakfast, with butter. At My Home they served this with super-strength coffee and gorgeous veg-filled omlettes. Even now I am craving that breakfast. When I get my sketchbook scanned in I will post a really nice page based on this photo. Something called 'Morning Glory', a vegetable that tasted everything like Spring Onion was prevelant in lots of dishes. It is delicious. I can see it waving at me in that omlette....soon!


By far one of THE most delicious meals I have ever eaten was this simple veg-filled noodle soup. I have made this at home since, as it really is simple. This is my version: rice noodles, green beans, carrots, mushrooms, spring onions. A coconut milk and curry powder soup made with chicken stick, ginger and lime as well as chilli and soy sauce...mmmm!
The original was eaten at Beng Mealea Camp, cooked by the lovely ladies there.


This might have something too do with the weight gain, beer and chocolate cake in Phnom Penh.


I found these supermarket foods so intriguing. Such care taken with preparation. I wanted to eat it all!


This was the inside of the Old Market in Siem Reap. Again, I want to eat everything!


Except this.
No....even this.


Of course we had plenty of posh food too. The Blue Pumpkin is a chain of resturants and cafe's all over Cambodia. If you fancy a treat for very little dollar, this is my recommendation. Four of us ate like Khmer Kings for $15 U.S each with two bottles of wine too. Bargain is not the word. Well....maybe it is.


So goodbye for now Cambodia and my lovely new friends: Anth, Bun Lay, Kate and Sarah. See you all soon x x

Friday, 11 November 2011

Cambodia Take Two - sensory overload

I'm glad you are enjoying my Cambodia pictures, I've had a lot of positive comments so far...thank you : )

Today I want to share the weird and wonderful sights of Cambodia. To Khmer people these may seem ordinary, but to me they were fresh and new and usually very colourful.
All my life I have dreamed of travelling to South East Asia. I don't know why. Maybe it's because I have been a massive Beatles fan, and read with interest how visits to Asia changed the band's viewpoint on spirituality and culture. Then, whilst at Art School my friends would go off travelling to India in the Summer and come back with colourful tales and photographs. It is strange to feel a deep connection to a place, culture, people I have never met...but this is how I felt as soon as I got to that part of the world. It is INCREDIBLY different from everything I am used to, in so many subtle ways. Even as we got to Singapore there was a feeling of lightness and space. But I lost my photographs of Changi Airport, so you will have to wait till next year for that blog.

Everywhere you go in Cambodia there is food. There is a national obsession with food. Cambodians must eat all the time. I didn't understand this until I read 'First they Killed my Father', and now I can see that through the Khmer Rouge times people were so hungry: starved in fact, that food must be very important to remind them of safety and freedom. Plus Cambodians just love food and BunLay told us they have always been that way, food is a very important part of their culture.

In 'Spider Town' we came accross a bustling roadside market selling all sorts. We were all persuaded to buy things from some incredibly sweet young girls who could charm Alan Sugar off his boardroom chair any day. We bought bananas, pineapple and mango as well as some small green tree fruits that in the Caribbean we called Akees.



I actually didn't buy one Rambutan whilst in Cambodia, although I was very excited to see so many. Next time.
All the fruit we bought was fresh, peeled and prepared and in bags. It was delicious, and none of us got sick from whatever water it was washed in. In fact I didn't get sick at all on my trip, and was very pleasantly surprised with hygene generally - everything is clean and in some places they have built western style loos for tourists. However I was a bit pissed off when we stopped at one of these toilet blocks. It was right opposite out community school in BengMealea. The kids aren't allowed to use the facilities, and only have two long-drop toilets for the entire school!


In Spider Town (Skuon) we had a hideous coffe experience that I can recall to this day. Cambodians love coffee..rrrreeeeally strong, and with condensed milk lurking in the bottom. This I got used to but they did something else here that rendered the coffee undrinkable. On the plus side, look at it!
And of course, this was where I saw the fried spiders for sale, as well as the crickets and other bugs.


No I didn't.





In the end the most spiritually touching experience for me was this. We had a water blessing by a monk at the nearby Buddhist Pagoda in Beng Mealea. This gentle, quiet but obviously quite cheeky little fellow swanned around the camp to see what had been built there for the students, nodded approvingly, then set about blessing us all with 6 months good luck - surprised at the specific time limit to the luck...should just need topping up when I go back! He was offered some goodies, as is the norm: can of pop, money, candes and some cigarettes. I have to sa I was not too impressed that with all their beautiful wisdom they are fine with smoking fags! But I'll let them off for doing such a good job of orange.

I have a few more sets to share: temples, floating village and new friends to mention a few.
Me x

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