On the Move to Phnom Penh

It’s a day on the road today.  We have a leisurely breakfast and leave the hotel at 9am.  It’s a long drive back past the Tonle Sap lake and on into Phnom Penh, taking around five and a half hours.

The drive passes quickly with much to see on the route that is new to us.  It is nice to see a slice of life in rural Cambodia and to see how they work and live.  To our surprise, much of the route is lined with houses, many of which have micro businesses running from the front of their properties.  These range from shops selling pretty much anything you could want to medical centres, workshops, garages and restaurants (I use the world loosely!).  It’s hard to see if one village/town has ended or the next one begun along the route.  This is occasionally punctuated by land that hasn’t been built on and usually forms paddy fields, mango or palm farms and the occasional livestock field with mainly cows and water buffalo.  These, however are kept for ploughing not for eating or for milk.

We have a quick stop at the half way point and stretch our legs.  We move on and our guide later informs us of the intention to stop for the last time, about an hour away from our final destination and at a place he ominously calls the Tarantula Stop.  We climb out of the car to be met by women selling fried tarantula from plates piled high with the arachnids, on skewers and covered in chilli and garlic!  we are also confronted with stalls selling everything from snacks of crickets, grubs and locusts to the rather more palatable dried and fresh fruits from the area.

Bug stop done, we head into the centre of Phenom Penh to check into our hotel.  We are pleasantly surprised to be shown to our ‘balcony suite’ after a refreshing, cold lemon and mint tea – a palatial room with a fantastic view and wrap around balcony.  On one side it overlooked the river and on the other, a very grand temple complex.  We didn’t have long to settle in before heading out to meet our guide for the night, who was going to take us on a food tour.

We started proceedings with a cocktail at Raffles Hotel; the Phnom Penh incarnation of the famous Raffles in Singapore.  Of course, I had to have the adapted Phnom Penh Sling to drink, with lychee and guava juice!  We weren’t expecting anything quite so ‘upmarket’ for what we thought was a street food tour.  Next on the list was a local restaurant where we had fried chicken with lemongrass, vegetable fried rice, morning glory in oyster sauce and an aubergine dish with loads of garlic.  All really good and local.  On next to a bar for more cocktails, at which point we were getting suspicious that this wasn’t the requested ‘street food’ tour.  Upon quizzing, the guide said that he was just doing what he had been requested to do and that the next restaurant was going to be another meal – not sure how they thought we were going to eat two full meals each in one night but we asked if we could make some changes.  He was more than happy to show us to a street vendor for dessert instead and we had a variety of local dishes, all rice based, to end our meal.  Desserts made with rice are a staple here, made with gelatinous rice and flavoured with fruits, pandan, lemongrass and taro.  We try a variety of dishes with the gelatinous rice augmented with sweet potato, mango, pinto beans (they have no problem mixing savoury ingredients with sweet for dessert!) and finally Corinne’s favourite, banana and coconut with tapioca.  We finished the night on top of our hotel where there was yet another cocktail bar with magnificent views over Phnom Penh, espresso martinis in hand!