Boiled Chicken Over Rice with Tamarind Sauce
Kompong Trach, Cambodia – We drove for about an hour and a half in a compact red car that was having some engine issues, first creeping along paved roads and then bouncing across narrow dirt roads that cut through rice paddies. Sok Lim, the field operator for FarmLink [...]
Ba Ba (Rice Soup) with Chicken
Battambang, Cambodia – I’m going to take a long step back in my Cambodian trip to Battambang, an Eastern province with gorgeous countryside and a great central market. Ba Ba, the rice soup pictured above, is a common market breakfast. It’s not congee or rice porridge, but rice [...]
Fresh Kampot Pepper on the Vine
Kampot, Cambodia – When Ngoun Lee, a fourth-generation pepper farmer, and his wife Leng Sopat returned to their land following the fall of Khmer Rouge there wasn’t much left. Where there had once been 2,000 wooden poles holding up leafy green vines that produce what many consider to be the [...]
Noun Houn Refined Salt Enterprise in Kampot
Kampot, Cambodia – Kampot is Cambodia’s only producer of salt, turning out around 70,000-90,000 tons each year. During the harvest, which runs from November through April concurrent with the dry season, sea water is funneled through channels into wide, square plots where the water evaporates, the salt is concentrated [...]
Kotrey (Fish Soup)
Kampot, Cambodia – The fish section of Psar (market in Khmer) Leu is one of the biggest and most diverse I’ve seen of the Southeast Asian markets I’ve visited, though I haven’t been in many coastal towns. After visiting that market, I decided to jump off the pork wagon for a bit and [...]
Chicken Sign at Kampot Rapids
Kampot, Cambodia – Outside of Kampot proper, local Khmers cool off in river rapids. Khmers, like Lao and Thai people, are a bit more modest so when it comes to swimwear they often dive in fully clothed. When I visited the rapids, neither swimming in jeans shorts and a t-shirt nor [...]
Vendor in Kampot’s Central Market
Kampot, Cambodia – Sometimes when you’re the only foreigner in the crowd you get special treatment, like a small, slow child. En route from Battambang to Phnom Penh, I was the only non-Cambodian on the bus and the little old lady sitting next to me chatted to me in Khmer most of the [...]
Num Pan Pate
Battambang, Cambodia – Similar to Vietnam’s bahn mi and Laos’s khao jii pate, Cambodia’s num pan pate is an a relic of the country’s French colonialist past. I got this particular sandwich at the White Rose, a decent restaurant in Battambang where both locals and foreigners gather for Khmer food. Unlike most, this was [...]
Num Ban Chouk
Battambang, Cambodia – This gorgeous rice noodle soup cost me 1500 riel (approximately $0.38), probably the cheapest meal I’ve had in even Southeast Asia and certainly one of the tastiest in Cambodia. Showered in herbs and chili, the light and bright broth was lively and playful. It was a great way to start the day.
Noodle Soup at Banan Temple
Battambang Province, Cambodia – If I had a little more brains and a lot more inner brawn, I would tour Southeast Asia by motorbike. We don’t need to go into the challenges of navigating a countryside lacking both street signage and maps as this fantasy shouldn’t be held too close to the light. For [...]
