Barbecue rodents in Camboadia. Photo / Mimi Field
Forty-five years since the demise of the brutal Khmer Rouge regime in which millions of people died of starvation, Cambodia has found its feet through its culinary scene, writes Christine Retschlag
On a toasty Siem Reap morning, the type that could melt the soles off your shoes, there are rats roasting on a roadside barbecue beside sizzling snakes coiled on hot coals.
Humidity and humility: one. Rodents and serpents: zero.
READ MORE: Authentic travel experiences in Cambodia
Earlier, had I been hungrier, I could have ordered crickets by the can in the local markets a couple of hours up the road.
Or perhaps a pig head or two. Slippery eels slapping against the side of a bucket? You bet your beetles roasted in garlic and basil on this Intrepid Real Food Adventure. Emphasis on the real.
In Cambodia, it’s a case of eat or be eaten. Just don’t forget the Kampot pepper.
This juicy journey begins along the country’s largest lake, Tonle Sap, where generations of floating fishermen and their families have flocked for food during the dry season and retreated towards the riverbanks of Siem Reap during the mighty monsoon.
Intrepid Cambodia tour guide “Fila”, who grew up in the floating village, speaks fondly of his rustic childhood out on this vast lake — the largest in the country and home to 3 million people and which swells from 3000sq km to 15,000sq km during the monsoon season between June and September.
There’s a flurry of fish here: catfish, elephant fish, snakehead fish and bamboo leaf fish whose names are as evocative as the species themselves.
“You never see the horizon. It is just the sky and the ocean together. In the morning you see the sun emerge out of the water, it is beautiful,” Fila says.
“We live a very peaceful life. We don’t have a plan A, B or C. We get up, go to work, catch fish, make money and eat rice and vegetables.
“One special thing here is that every single family knows each other.”
I glide into Chong Knes village past floating shops, skinny kids collecting fat firewood from old boat hulls, fishermen tossing nets, and others painting their boats sky blue.
Plump water buffaloes graze on the lake’s edges as my boat sputters past shrimp traps, thickets of sticks to anchor large buildings, and a police station, primary school, and church bobbing on the water.
This Cambodian culinary adventure on which I find myself is a mixed bowl of low and high-end experiences, but the result is always the same in this delicious destination. Packed with flavour and unlike anything you’ve ever tasted even from its close neighbours of Thailand and Vietnam.
Lunch is at the upmarket Malis Restaurant where I’ll sip on local gin or Herbal Kulen while supping on the likes of royal mak mee — a traditional dish of crispy fried noodles topped with pork; bamboo shoots and smoked fish soup; and two-tone sticky rice for dessert.
Later, for a pre-dinner snack, I’ll sashay along the riverfront and feast on a 60¢ Num Pang — a thin baguette with savoury fillings and barbecued beef skewer for 30¢ washed down with an Angkor Beer for about $1.
End the evening with a cocktail-making class at Sombai, which produces its own Khmer Liqueur — try the passion spices here.
Even the three main temples of Angkor are like entree, main and dessert starting at sunrise at Angkor Wat; followed by Ta Prohm with its strangling trees (best known for the 2001 film Lara Croft: Tomb Raider); and finishing with Angkor Thom with its eerie etched faces.
Do pause during your Angkor amblings at Porch for the Srah Srang Set lunch, which includes the flavoursome na tang minced pork in coconut milk and served underneath a traditional Cambodian house on stilts.
About 20 minutes outside Siem Reap at Pouk Market you can buy a can of crickets, deep-fried in olive oil and served with salt, kaffir lime and authenticity in spades for $2.
Want a roasted roadside rat? Two will set you back $4 and taste like one of the best duck dishes you’ve eaten.
On this tour, you’ll travel into the countryside on a four-hour drive from Siem Reap into Battambang, which is regarded as producing Cambodia’s finest rice.
Fila says it’s not even considered a meal in Cambodia unless it involves rice and there are seven varieties of rice in total with 85-90% of the population rice farmers.
Soup, often infused with lemongrass and coconut cream, is also at the heart of most meals as is Kampot pepper (known for its aromatic herbs, cedar and citrus) and garlic, lime, salt, palm sugar and fish sauce.
Dine at Jaan Bai — which means “the plate” — and be fed by university students who are being sponsored to learn Cambodia’s culinary quirks.
King prawns swimming in Kampot pepper is the signature experience here.
On a cycling tour, head into the back streets and beyond of Battambang to witness where family businesses make as many as 2000 rice papers a day; venomous cobra is transformed into rice wine; bananas are dried into tasty chips; and pungent fish sauce languishes in hot factory vats.
In Battambang, I follow in the footsteps of Angelina Jolie and sleep in a traditional stilted house at Maison Wat, which Jolie used as her base while filming First They Killed My Father — a movie about the Khmer Rouge.
Back in Siem Reap and in the traditional village of Phradak, rice noodles are still fashioned from a thousand-year-old tradition and cooked in a steam pot to match the steaming morning.
Even the plump pigs are sweating on the spit and best served with Kampot pepper and a cold local beer, while further up the street dine on a Cambodian cupcake made from rice flower and coconut milk.
During this delectable week, I dine on num krak, which is crispy on the outside and soft in the middle and which turns out to be a metaphor itself for the always colourful, sometimes chaotic country in which I find myself.
Like Cambodian cuisine, the people are authentic and organic, sun-dried, a little bit sweet, a little bit sour, salty, spicy and full of colour.
At the heart of all of this lies the commonly used phrase sok sabai, which means “joyful, happy, smiling, love, caring and sharing”.
According to Fila, it all comes back to the rice.
“We have a saying that the very best perfume in the world can’t smell as good as the rice flower,” he says.
“I love this country so much because it is just gold.”
Not part of the official tour but well worth visiting in your spare time in Siem Reap is Apopo — an organisation that trains rats to detect landmines. These “HeroRats” can scan for explosives in 30 minutes in an area the size of a tennis court that would take humans four days. Even better, no rats have been harmed in the process, which involves a click-and-reward system. Cambodia is one of the most mine-affected countries in the world with more than 1000sq km of land still contaminated by explosives.
Some girls are so poor in Cambodia’s countryside they don’t own underwear, let alone sanitary products. Intrepid Travel is a foundation partner of Cambodia Rural Students Trust (CRST), which runs projects designed to break the poverty cycle through education. One such programme, Project G, is about empowering girls through the provision of reusable cloth period products and underwear and to eradicate any shame associated with menstruation.
Back in 2017, female tuk-tuk drivers were rare in Siem Reap. Enter Driver Srey, which solely employs women and has grown to 24 drivers in the past seven years, providing much-needed income for its workforce of primarily single mothers. Spot these formidable females in their feminist purple shirts and, like Intrepid, support them on your travels.
GETTING THERE
Singapore Airlines flies from Auckland to Siem Reap via Singapore with one stopover.
DETAILS
tourismcambodia.org
The writer experienced a portion of Intrepid Travel’s 8-day Real Food Adventure, which starts in Phnom Penh and ends in Siem Reap
The chef chats to Herald Travel about unforgettable foodie experiences in Aotearoa.