Hooray For Pho!

You may not know this, but Cambodian cuisine is almost exactly the same as Thai but less spicy (or, as Pow likes to say, more bland — though take that with a grain of salt because her Asian palate is biased. When she first moved to New York from Manila she thought American food “was so bland!”).

Because of the similarities that means for the last 17 days we have been eating basically a variation on the same dish: yellow, green, or red curry, various vegetables, some sort of meat (beef, chicken, tofu, shrimp), occasionally mixed with coconut milk, tossed with noodles or steamed rice on the side. Of course, we’ve eaten a few other dishes here and there (and even gone to a few Pakistani/Indian places and a Mexican restaurant in Phnom Penh to fulfill the craving I’ve had for guacamole since my plane left the tarmac in San Francisco). But, the reality is, I’m a little through with curry. Sorry Thais.

Which is why I’m extremely excited that today we’re off to Vietnam! Hooray for Pho! And clear broth, french bread sandwiches, and noodle salads with fresh mint!

Cambodia, for what it’s worth, has been an absolutely amazing place. It’s one of the poorest countries in the world (according to my guidebook) but the people here are incredibly friendly. They have big smiles and absolutely fantastic senses of humor – we’ve laughed a lot since we’ve been here. It’s also remarkably dusty and I’ve been coughing for a week, which hasn’t been helping me to get over my chest cold….

We got to Cambodia by bus and when we arrived at the border we quickly realized the new bus they were ushering us to was going to be torture for six hours. So we went in on a shared taxi with a very nice older French gentleman named Giles who was traveling alone (“You’ve got a good president now!” he said when I introduced myself as an American — and then he proceeded to make fun of me and Bush for the next several hours.)

The taxi took three hours (instead of the bus’s six) to get to Siem Reap, where the temples of Angkor are located — Angkor Wat, if you don’t know, is just one of many temples sprinkled around the countryside. And, by the way, that Cambodian sense of humor comes through in the name of the town. Siem Reap means “Siam defeated” — the Cambodians way of telling everyone that even though the Thais conquered and ruled them for a little while, they never got their hands on Angkor!

We hired a Tuk Tuk driver and a guide to show us the temples and, over the next several days, climbed over and through some incredibly beautiful monuments to ancient Cambodian architecture and design. (More on that in photo form later.)

Then it was another 6 hour bus ride to Phnom Penh. The city is really a stark difference to the incredibly tiny villages and wood huts that dot the countryside. The construction here is very new, for the most part, and the whole place looks as though it has been lifted out of a country in Europe and plopped in the middle of Cambodia. It’s lovely really.

The only major downside – and take this all with some skepticism as I’ve only had one day here – is that, while there’s been a visible difference between the Have’s and the Have Not’s in all the other countries we’ve seen, here, everyone seems to have not. Except, of course, for the expats and tourists. It must be difficult to see so many rich people march through your town on a regular basis and take their expensive cameras and money belts with them. Which is why I’m not too angry about the guys who drove up next to our Tuk Tuk on a motorbike and grabbed my bag — though if I hadn’t been able to wrestle it back from him and yell “Nice try!” I might be singing a different song.

Ok, well, now you’re mostly caught up. I realize I’ve skipped most of Thailand and haven’t even mentioned Bangkok, but it’s been so long since I’ve sat at a computer that actually displays letters as soon as I type them and not minutes later I thought I’d skip ahead. As soon as I get to a computer that has a working USB drive and is fast enough to display my photos I’ll do a round up of everywhere else we’ve been.

Off to Saigon!

Advertisement