2/12 Le Tigre de Papier Cooking school

Last day in Cambodia, and we spend a good part of it ding what we love:  cooking and eating!  We’ve scheduled the Le Tigre de Papier Cooking school for 10am.  It’s a school put on by one of the restaurants here (actually as we find out from our teaching chef, the company owns about 5 more restaurants up and down Pub Street, so we start calling them the TGIFriday’s of Siem Reap), and we get to choose one app and one main from their menu to cook.

On our way to the restaurant, we drop off our laundry for one day service ($1US/KG) – way cheap. Figure at this price, we can go home with all clean clothes and save on our power bill.

Then off we go to Pub Street for our lessons.  We show up early, so we wander about, checking out the new restaurants, figuring out what we want for dinner.  Maybe the BBQ – while it’s expensive - $14.75 for 2 (yeah, I know), it’s a whole lot of food we get to BBQ right at our table.  Hmmm…we’ll see.

Back at the restaurant we are seated with menus and told to choose our dishes.  For apps – we both pick salads – I do the papaya salad (because it is different than the Thai version) and Ed chooses spicy shrimp salad.  For mains – well – this one’s easy – I do Beef Lok Lak, and Ed does Amok Fish.  We get together with our group – a lovely mix – a single traveler from Montreal and a couple from Salzburg.  We all choose our dishes individually, then as a group we get to decide our dessert – and everyone else wants sticky rice. So we go along (I was hoping for the banana dish, but majority rules!). Now, off to the market – just to look – because of course, all the food is already available since the dishes are on the restaurant menu!

The market is crazy!  Teeming with people and fish, meat, poultry, vegetables even honey comb.  I love the way the vendors sit/squat on top of the table where their merchandise is displayed!

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Our chef-teacher, Ms. Heng, explains the various herbs, vegetables and greens all around us.  She also explains the fruit – which we’ve seen from Thailand – mangosteens!  But no one else has seen them.  She buys us some to go with our sticky rice.  She also helps us by spices from a vendor – 3 big bags for $5US.  A discount from $2 each.  We get 2 Amok and 1 Lemongrass (just in case we can’t get the frozen lemongrass from the Thai Grocery when we are in Richmond). 

The last stalls we pass are the rice noodle stalls, where they hall all the noodles stacked so nicely in “nests”, then they package them up in banana leaves when you buy them.

After a couple minutes more of the frenzy, we head back to the kitchen to start prepping and cooking!

What a totally fun morning – and into the afternoon.  We prep our dishes, cutting, chopping and organizing.  Each of us getting direction from our teacher.  She’s constantly about – showing us what to do, going into the kitchen to prepare items, just running about in general.  We all spend the time, chopping, talking and generally just enjoying each other’s company.

Unfortunately, the male counterpart of the Austrian couple (we never did get their names) isn’t feeling all that well, travelers tummy, so he goes back to the hotel, and his girlfriend is left to cook all 4 dishes!  It all works out though…

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After we prep, we head into the kitchen in groups to cook our meals. First up the sauces for the apps, then the apps themselves.  It’s tight in there, but it’s fun to be in a real kitchen cooking up our meals!

 

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Then we start to assemble our dishes…

 

And finally get to go across the street to the Bamboo cafe to eat them!

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It was a fabulous time, cooking, learning new recipes, and chatting with everyone.   We’re stuffed from out great meal – but still have room for our sweet sticky rice and fruit!

We finally break up the group around 2.  We all head off our separate ways, with a cooking certificate from the school, and a video of all the recipes for only $5!

We head over to the market on the make for a replacement pair of RayBans for me because I’ve cracked mine getting into the van in Hanoi, and a set of chopsticks.  $3 bucks for the RayBans, $6 for a set of 20 chopsticks with mother of pearl handles.  We’re done shopping!  That was easy.

Heading back to the hotel, we grab some batteries for our travel alarm ($0.25 for 2 AAA batteries!), then we spy this special promo at one of the fish spas:  15 minutes for $1 plus a free beer.

OK – well, we can not pass this up. The beer alone does the trick.  So…here we go..we stick our feet into the fish “bowl” – and oh my god – it is the WEIRDEST sensation you have ever felt. These fish nibbling on your feet.  I am laughing so hard, I am crying.  It tickles, it just feels so darn weird!  Ed isn’t laughing like me, he’s just taking pictures….

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Thoroughly delighted, we head back to the hotel to relax at the pool.  We manage to while away the rest of the afternoon, hanging around the pool and getting cooled off.  We go to get the laundry at 5, but it’s not ready yet, so more relaxing, and finally at 6:30 we can pick it up and finish packing.

Now, it is down to mere hours left.  Can’t believe the time has passed so darn quickly.  For dinner tonight, we are so not hungry, that huge lunch is still with us. So we go back to The Old house and just get fried spring rolls (for me) and soup and an Ocean burger (for Ed).  The Ocean burger is great – it’s a fish sandwich of fish from Tonle Sap lake and it is prepared so well – and so fresh.  Really a great meal. We are – once again stuffed as we trundle back to the hotel, with a stop at the central market for another pair of Raybans because we realize the ones we bought this afternoon are broken. I’ve sort of patched them up and will wear them until the temple snaps off, but I do want a good pair.  $3 again. That seems to be the going price!

Home again, we drift off to sleep with the alarm set early for breakfast and our flight.

2/11 Sunset Horseback Ride

Today we just relaxed at the hotel.  After breakfast (which is a huge buffet of every imaginable food!), the morning is cool enough to sit outside on our little patio and read and write.  I’ve got a massage and mani-pedi scheduled for 10:30 (included in the ridiculously low room price of $40/night), so that will be my morning.  

There is a little bit of lost in the translation/mis-communication with the massage.  When I scheduled it last night, they said it included transportation to and from the spa.  But this morning, they tell me to wait in my room.  Huh.  Last time here, they came to me, so now we’re assuming that will be the same today. 

And we are right!  Here comes my little masseuse with her box of nail polish and accessories!  So while Ed sits outside and reads, I get what I am know calling the Push me-Pull you massage.  It’s the traditional Khmer massage, where they use pressure points and stretching and lots of elbows and feet.  It’s odd – but it is relaxing, and it sure does stretch my muscles.  My favorite parts were the back – where she was literally sitting on my back – and the head and face massage.  I’m relaxed!

Then onto the mani-pedi – with me sitting on the bed and the masseuse turned manicurist on the floor doing my toes.  Hey – when in Cambodia!

After those festivities, we just whiled away the afternoon on the porch until 3:00 when we left for our Sunset horseback ride.

The tuk tuk picks us up right on time and we head out of town to the Happy Ranch horse farm.  We’ve never been on this side of town – and it gets pretty rural, pretty quickly.  The tuk tuk ride is great – through the dusty dirt roads and past the water buffalo in the street!

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After about 20 minutes, we arrive at the farm.  It’s beautiful out here, the farm is very large (47 horses including 3 babies, one just foaled 10 days ago)…

…and get geared up.  Have to admit they think of everything here – they provide little fanny packs to put your gear in – and of course lockers for the bigger stuff.  We’ve only brought our cameras and my little “thirty-one” purse (thank you secret santa person!!) – it all fits in the packs.  We meet our mounts – I have Barney who likes to eat tall grass, and Ed has Astar who likes to sit down in the sand.  These are the novice horses of course, but we’ll still have our work cut out for us we think.  Saddled up….

…we head out. 

Our guide Jay is great – he tells us all about the area we ride through, the villages, the rice fields. He’s from the local area, lived in a monastery until 2 years ago when he came to the Happy Ranch, learned how to ride and trained to be a guide.  Very well spoken and very engaging, we spend the next 3 hours listening to his explanations and enjoying the country side.

We ride past all level of houses – the thatched huts and beautiful, huge concrete mansions – all right next to each other.

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And of course the children.  Once again, every house we pass, they yell hello, bye bye, although now, here, closer to town, obviously with more education, some can also ask our names and how we are.  They can respond when we ask how they are with “very well, thank you madam”.  So sweet – and the little ones!  They get so excited….they scream and squeal and come running out to the end of their property to wave and say hello.  And then of course, Jay turns his horse toward them, and they squeal and run back away.  Too precious.

As we move on, we notice a distinct difference from yesterday’s scenery.  The rice fields haven’t been harvested yet (they are late this year because of the floods), so the fields are a vibrant green and beautiful. It’s incredible! Wildlife is everywhere – we see more water buffalo and cows than we’ve seen throughout the trip. And babies – baby buffalo, so skittish when we come by, calves and ducks and chicks.

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We pass by a school, a crematorium, more villages and farms with local life all around us.  We trot a bit (yeah, that takes way more practice than we’ve had – even trying to post – it is so hard to get it right!), we navigate through mud and sand (don’t sit down Astar!!) and then into the Wat Athvea – which means Wat without a door.  It is a Hindu temple, built before Angkor Wat by King Suryavarman II.  This is a great time for a break – both for the horses and us (more for us though! Our legs are really sore, especially our thighs! Wow!  And my little knee thing?  Horse back riding is not really the thing for that – both my knees are hurting when I dismount. So let’s hope some stretching will take care of that!).

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There is also a monastery right on the premises where the monks still live (and where Jay either lived or comes every day to help the monks).   Pictures below are where the monks live – and also a Monk on a cell phone!  Kind of completes are whole Monk with an iPad, Monk on a scooter, Monk with a whatever technological gadget that catches our eye game.  Sort of like Where’s Waldo?, we’ve been doing Monk with a……fill in the blank…ever since we landed in Thailand!

 

Back on the horses, we head through the rice fields to watch the sunset. It is magnificent.  The only problem is that we are in the rice fields and every time there is a great shot to take, Barney decides it’s time to eat and literally goes down into the rice paddy to grab some rice.  And he is stubborn, boy.  Yanking him up and back on the trail takes all my strength.  At about this time, Astar decides to do the same thing – and if anything, he’s even more stubborn than Barney!  Yikes! 

So we plod along – yanking away – and watching the sunset.

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It’s starting to get dark now as we head back to the ranch.  The sun dropping lower and lower, the cows and water buffalo still roaming, and people still in the fields collecting rice etc.  It’s still so peaceful and serene and lovely as dusk descends on this part of the world.

Of course there are also those already done for the day – like the guys hanging out around a bottle of rice wine who ask Ed to join them in a drink. Thanks! But we’ll keep heading for the ranch with the horses!  We try to trot a bit, but Astar has decided that he wants to canter – and that’s not happening!  So, we just do a semi-fast walk back as it really starts to get dark. We have one more main road to cross and the owner and his helpers meet us there with light sticks to stop the traffic as we cross – it’s really dark now – but of course, the horses know their way!  I’m surprised they haven’t taken off for the barn yet.

We make it back in one piece, happy to be off the horses, but so happy we did it. That was one unforgettable adventure.  I’d rank it as one of the best on the entire trip! 

Our faithful tuk tuk driver is waiting for us when we return, and hop aboard for our ride back to town.  It’s a ride too – it’s pitch black out here and the roads are filled with pot holes and sand traps.  He navigates extremely well – and we’re glad we asked the Happy Ranch to organize the tuk tuk for us.  Someone else may have know where to go, but this guy obviously does it alot and knows the ins and outs of the road, for which we are grateful!

Back at the hotel, we freshen up and go have our set menu dinner (included in the room price!).  It’s just us in the restaurant – which is perfect. It’s so nice and quiet, there’s a nice breeze and we feast on spring rolls, seafood salad (again papaya like, but not), vegetable soup and Fish Amok – which is wholly different from the Amok we had the other night at Angkor Famous.  We finish off our meal with fresh fruit.  Lovely – now back to our room to collapse on the bed and work out the kinks from the horse ride – should have saved that massage for tomorrow!

2/10 Beng Melea

After lunch it is on to Beng Melea. It is really amazing – and no one is there.  Seriously.  After the Angkor Wat crowds we remembered from our last visit, this is blissfully peaceful.  Som walks us around the temple exterior, showing us different areas and wall structures.  The temple was created for worship only – not like Angkor Wat which was for both worship and for the King to live. It’s in ruin now simply from the environment.  Trees have grown up and around the stones, breaking the walls and leaving the structures inside the walls in a shambles.  It’s beautiful and incredible though – these huge stones, no mortar, all done by manual labor so, so long ago.

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Once on the inside of the temple, Som tells us to walk through and come back and meet him.  He says, almost as an aside, some kids will follow you, but come back here.  OK – and a kid does follow us. Well, not so much follow as lead us through and act as our little tour guide.  Chacka, who looks to be about 8 or 9, shows us through the ruins.

This dusty little boy speaks incredible English, and we find out he speaks French too.  He tells us all about the libraries here, the different carvings, what they stand for, he just rambles on the entire time!  He knows his stuff.

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When it’s time to go, we negotiate a tip with him – and tell him he will own his own tour company one day!

Back in the bus, we retrace our path, but by all paved roads this time!  Past the villages, the celebrations, and oh – those odd tractor engine long tail sort of bizarre contraptions they use to haul everything from heavy wood, brick, merchandise to people.  Pictures are from the van, so they aren’t that good – but….hopefully you'll get the idea.

Back in town, and through the crush of traffic, onto our own dusty little lane and down our alley to the hotel.  At least it’s still peaceful back here!  We hit the shower IMMEDIATELY!  Oh my – that feels so good!  Then relax for a bit before dinner.

Out into the streets, it’s not so hot as last night, or at least, maybe we are getting acclimatized!  We head out to The Old House, a restaurant that is close to Pub Street, but not on Pub Street.  It’s a beautiful little oasis of calm and serenity but still right on the street.  Buddha’s and rough hewn stones for accents.  Linen napkins, soft music in the background.  This is the antidote to our long hot countryside day.  And it is still so reasonable!  The main dishes are $3.50US each.  Can’t go wrong here.

We share a fish salad, which is a little like Papaya salad with 4 pieces of sautéed fish, Ed has fish soup, then Beef with Khmer sauce and I have Beef Lok Lak (we’re liking that!).  All the food is just excellent – and we walk home nicely stuffed.

It’s still hot though – so we decide to go for a quick jump in the pool to cool off before bed.  Lovely end to a very interesting day!

2/10 Biking to Beng Melea

In the category of what the heck were we thinking today comes our 75K bike ride to the Beng Melea temple – a seldom visited temple way outside of Siem Reap that is in ruins, with trees growing through it.  The bike ride through the countryside sounds lovely.  Lunch at the temple and then exploring sounds just perfect.  What doesn’t sound so good is the mid -90 degree temperatures and high humidity.  But – hey – we knew it would be hot…so….off we go.

Well, sort of. There was a little mix up with the pick up so instead of being there for us at 6:30am, we had to call and they showed up a little closer to 7am.  Minor glitches.  Its only the 2 of us once again, so this will be a great private tour.  Got saddled up and headed out by 7:15.  It’s actually really quite pleasant in the morning, coolish with a little breeze.  We point the bikes North and ride through a totally local area with huts on the river, shops selling everything from food to what amounts to basically illegal petrol in whiskey or litre coke bottles.  Part of town we’ve never seen – that’s for sure.

We wind around and finally hit Highway 6 – the main new road in and out of town. We’re only on it for a bit before we head out onto another new road built for the exposition a few years back, then its onto the country roads and lanes in the middle of absolutely nowhere (well, in the middle of nowhere near Siem Reap!!!).

The follow car driver is new, so he doesn’t know where to meet us.  Som, our guide, goes back to fetch him while Ed and I wait at the cross roads of a little village and the highway.  No power here, just shacks.  Maybe a generator or two, and lots of battery power – instead of electricity they hook up whatever they have to car batteries.  We see a couple of battery charging places along our route.  Oh, and also the businesses selling petrol (that’s pretty ubiquitous here), snacks and other things to passers by.

We stand at the cross roads and just watch the traffic. Oh my gosh – what they put on those scooters!  I have no idea how they can balance – mattresses (I kid you not), gas cans, wood, bags of something that looked like onions – but so many, and so huge it looked like an overblown, lumpy Michelin man on a scooter.  Honestly!

But once we have the van with us, we head out on the dusty lanes and little roads that crisscross the countryside where it’s a tad more peaceful – Oh sure, there are scooters (even some I started calling tuk tuk buses – with a large flat bed trailing attached to the scooter and tons of people on it – with and without merchandise), but mostly it is just us pedaling through the country.  The first part of the trip takes us through the rice fields, all harvested now.  We pass fields, cows, water buffalo (and their babies, we saw a lot of babies on this ride – water buffalo calves and baby chicks and ducks), and a few houses scattered here and there. 

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FYI – photos are limited today because either A) the scooters are going too fast to catch on camera, or B) I’m riding and while I’m good on a bike, I’m not so coordinated to navigate bumpy dusty dirt lanes, the bike and the camera.  So – use your imagination please!

We stop for a quick break at a cross roads where locals going to the mountains for the day will stop for breakfast.  We sit and have water (and I actually had hot tea – don’t ask – I was thinking of the Mekong and so I thought I’d try to recreate it – didn’t work but it was still surprisingly refreshing!) while Som and the driver had breakfast (because they missed it).

Next we cycled out  onto a dirt road that has just been graded and new dirt was waiting to be spread. Unfortunately, one of the large work trucks had slid off the road (probably 6 or 7 feet down into a ditch) and there was no getting around it.  So, we had to pack the bikes into the van and go around to the other side of the road where we would have come out. No biggie. Nice break, actually!

We’re once again on the dusty lanes between rice fields.  It’s starting to heat up, but there is a nice breeze going.  Breeze is good to cool us off, but bad to pedal into – always a trade off, isn’t there?  The harvest is definitely done here, the landscape not nearly as colorful as when the rice is in. 

We cycle through little villages where there are houses of every range – nicely built brown wood stained – to nothing more than basic shacks.  Thatched shacks – sort of like the thatched roofs but on the walls too.  Or just huts of what looks like palm fronds woven together?  No electricity.  Abject poverty – so sad.  And the amazing thing?  Everywhere we go – every house we pass with children (and we are talking dozens and dozens of houses), they all get so excited and shout “hello” or “bye bye” or both.  Running up to the road to wave at us with beautiful smiles or just staying underneath the house to keep cool, but still shouting out “hello”.  Heart warming – and heart breaking at the same time.

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More dirt roads, then paved roads, shacks, houses and kids.  For hours – oh and naked babies.  Everywhere – most of the babies are naked and running around – waving at us from the side of the road.  We pass many little villages – all so poor – and then smack in the middle of all of this is a little store that is selling “party” dresses?  Totally at odds with the surroundings.

We pass celebrations under big tents with LOUD music.  Two Alms giving celebrations where the villagers all come together to celebrate the harvest and give alms in thanks.  One wedding celebration where everyone was dancing in a large circle under a tent festooned with ribbons and sashes.  Som told us that this was the final day of the wedding celebration.

On the next dirt lane, we pass farmers who are fishing in the mud hole!  Som had told us that after the harvest, the farmers dig a big pond “hole” for fish. The fish naturally gravitate to this pond and grow and breed we suppose.  Then, they go fishing.  Of course when he tells us this, I assume they are out there with their fishing poles.  Oh no, nothing so ordinary!  They drain most of the pond and then jump into the mud to grab the fish.  Absolutely amazing!  And they were catching BIG fish. The one girl in the mud caught a huge catfish!  They eat most of the fish they gather, and sell the rest.

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We continue on our dusty lane through the rice fields to our a little rest stop at someone’s home – where we gratefully sit down in the shade and refresh ourselves with cold water and the fresh fruit from the market place – mangoes, longen berries and oranges.  Yum!  We also see our first cashew tree.  Have never seen on before – they are amazing!

But all throughout the ride, you have to keep pinching yourself and telling yourself that this is really real – it’s so easy to not see the reality of life here – to think it’s just another Disney setting.  Could people really live here like this?  The answer is, of course, yes.  And with every shack you pass, every open fire, every naked baby, every smiling child, the full impact of this country’s tortured past really comes home.  Compare this to Thailand, just a few hundred miles away.  Yes, there’s certainly poverty – and out in the fields there isn’t so much growth or development, but their overall situation is nowhere near this level of destitute. The same to some degree in Vietnam.  Why is Cambodia so left behind?  And then you have to ask yourself, how can virtually everyone you meet here be so sweet and happy and while not exactly optimistic, not completely devastated either.  They go home to thatched huts with no power, for heaven’s sakes.  Makes you think…and wonder…especially on a 75KM bike ride. Sorry, but stopping in the one room shack for our fruit snacks, being welcomed with smiles by the family who obviously lives there with 3 little kids just makes my brain hurt.

Enough of my proselytizing.  Back to the bikes.  It’s hot now.  We’re dusty, dirty, sweaty and getting really uncomfortable.  When we stopped for fruit, I passed out the “refreshing” towels we have been collecting from the airlines – all three of us wiped our faces and the towels came back totally brownish red from the dirt on the lanes. Ugh!  Fortunately we’re close – only 12 KM more to Beng Melea.

We strike out again, but in the final analysis?  We’re done.  It’s so hot, there is NO shade on this last stretch of paved road and the heat is just undulating off the asphalt.  Finally with 7KM left to go – we call Uncle.  What’s the sense?  It’s a paved road with little scenery and no shade? We’ve seen and experienced so much already today – 7KM in the air conditioned van is way more inviting than saying we made it all the way.  So Uncle it is (and we taught Som a new saying - “Uncle” – so at least there’s that!).  And, biking 68k ain’t so bad!

Bikes packed up, into the A/C we go. Oh heaven!  Som even said he was hot and done, but of course couldn’t say anything to us because we’re the customer.  He was just as happy and relieved as we were though! It takes another 15 minutes in the van to get to the temple – so we made the right move!

We have lunch at the little restaurant outside the temple – Ed had Beef Lok Lak – which is extraordinary.  This great, rich red sauce over beef – we are looking that recipe up for certain!  I had Pork with Khmer sauce, but they seemed to have lost my order, Ed had his meal and was finished and I still didn’t have mine.  Som came back for his lunch and talked to the kitchen. Mine came out quickly after that – don’t think it was what I ordered – but it was really good.  Pork with garlic – whatever – flavorful taste, sautéed in a tangy sauce and nicely accented with garlic.  Totally full!