Well Life on the Farm is Kinda Laid Back

Ain’t much an old country boy like me can’t hack / It’s early to rise, early in the sack / Thank God I’m a country boy. After another long day of travel, we had our fingers crossed that getting our visa on arrival in Siem Reap would be a piece of cake. You read stories online about waiting for hours or officials getting picky about having exact change (which we did not). Thankfully, the entire process took less than 20 minutes. We grabbed a taxi driver and headed out to our hotel, Banyan Leaf.

Besides the universal use of US dollars as the accepted currency (an after-effect of the Khmer Rouge banning currency and blowing up the national bank in the late 70s), the other striking thing we immediately noticed was the fact that Cambodian traffic wasn’t absolutely insane, like every other SE Asian country we have visited. The drivers drove almost painfully slow, and there was a completely separate lane for mopeds and tuk tuks. It made so much sense. Where are we, we wondered?

We dropped off our bags at the hotel and headed off to Pub Street, the central nightlife area of Siem Reap. Despite its raucous reputation, we found a variety of great food and drinking places that weren’t blasting unz unz music. In fact, many of the bars had delightfully cute themes like 1920s Shanghai or tiki island. We ventured into Asana bar (a bar built into a traditional Cambodian house on stilts) and enjoyed some highly-deserved cocktails before turning in for bed. We both agreed that the vibe of the city was remarkably easy-going.

The next day was an exploration day. Shiv and I have carved out a little tradition of allowing ourselves on the first day of travel in a new city to just simply explore the city – no tours, no commitments – just seeing where the day takes us. In that day’s exploration, besides fending off hey lady, tuk tuk? calls every 2 minutes, we found ourselves trying traditional Khmer cuisine at Mahob Khmer for lunch and then at Café Indochine for dinner. We sampled two traditional Cambodian dishes: fish amok, a curry soup, and beef lok lak. Shiv and I found Cambodian flavors to be subtle, yet delicious.

But the thing that we really took a strong liking to was the Kampot pepper. Regarded as one of this finest peppers in the world, we finally understood why. It’s not like anything you’d find in the US; this pepper has personality. Take your usual black pepper, amp up the flavor by 200% , and then put a spicy edge to it. And that’s Kampot pepper. We obviously got a pack to bring home with us, fully aware that we may become Kampot pepper addicts.

On recommendation from our friend Stine, we booked a Cambodian experience with Triple A Adventures for the next day. We got picked up from our hotel and were taken to Bakong District, Rolous Commune. A lot of people come to Siem Reap to see Angkor Wat (it is the #1 destination in Asia according to Trip Advisor), but we also wanted to see the countryside. This tour was a great way to do it!

Our tour guide, Soksan, is a native-born Chinese-Cambodian who speaks English well. She was a total sweetheart as she guided our group of seven through the day. We started on bicycles through the village. It was all flat land so very easy to bike. We saw rice paddies, little kids playing on the red dirt roads, and people drying their harvested rice in the streets.

Our first stop was the Rolous Market, the local market for the village. Cambodia has the largest lake in all of Southeast Asia, the Tonlé Sap, so a lot of their cuisine is fish-based. And where do you buy the fish? At the market of course! We saw vendor after vendor with those round, pastel-colored plastic oil drop pans full of squirming fish. Many of the women were busily scraping scales off the fish, so you’d see shimmering mountains of discarded scales everywhere. Bright red chilis were nestled between peeping baby ducks, adjacent to 5-gallon buckets full of wiggly tapioca jelly. Women would saunter from vendor to vendor picking out the day’s groceries. We even saw the ice delivery guys cutting up huge blocks of ice for the market.

During our walkthrough, I kept seeing large bowls filled with what looked like soggy, mashed newspaper rolled into a giant ball. Soksan explained that it was cheese. Cheese? I hadn’t seen cheese since we left the US! [Side note: Sharadigail, I’m not sure how you will survive without cheese here]. She said that it wasn’t actually cheese, but that’s what the locals called it. In reality, it was a crushed, salted, and fermented fish paste which they call prahok. While it didn’t smell nearly as bad as shrimp paste, it still had a little funkiness to it, sort of like how my Grandma’s kitchen would smell when she would prepare a fish dinner. I politely said no thanks.

But what I did say yes, please to was the scrumptious French cakes that a woman was making. She had set up two round charcoal pits with stilts to hold her cast-iron mini-bundt cake pans. Soksan bartered with the woman and got a handful of the still-warm treats for everyone to enjoy. Since France colonized parts of Cambodia, there is some influence of their presence throughout Siem Reap. Not just in restoring the Angkor temples, but in bringing over yummy treats, evidently.

After the market, we headed out to see the Preah Ko temple ruins. This temple, the first to be built in the ancient city of Hariharalaya (now Rolous), was built in 879 by Khmer King Indravarman I. As we headed over there on our bikes, a swarm of giddy village kids hitched rides on the backs of our bikes to the temple – which now serves as their own jungle gym. As we explored the ruins, the kids would grab our hands and want to play.

What was really cool about this, though, was that about 100 yards from the ruins, they were building the movie set for First They Killed My Father. This movie is based on the book by the same title (I’m reading it currently), and is an autobiography of a child’s time during the Khmer Rouge. It’s not for the faint of heart. Directed by Angelina Jolie, it will be a Netflix original movie and comes out in 2016. No, I didn’t see her or anyone else famous, but it was cool to see the set!

Our last stop on the bicycle tour was to a Cambodian family’s home. We met an eighty-two year-old blacksmith who still hones his craft in the front yard of his house. He also likes to make kites in his spare time. Cambodian kites make noise when you fly them, and his granddaughter gave me a demonstration of how to make the kite sing. After two tries, I was finally successful! My other favorite memory from this stop was the two year-old grandson who was stark naked except for his shoes. Why the shoes? None of the other kids were wearing them. If you had no clothes on, why put shoes on? Kids…gotta love ’em.

The next leg of the tour was dedicated to exploring the Tonlé Sap via boat and, in particular, the Kompong Khleang floating village. Cambodian houses are all built on stilts. I heard several reasons for this, one being that the dead live in the ground, and the living live above it, another being that the shade provided underneath the house is good for storing livestock or performing tasks out of the hot sun, and finally that it helps with flooding. It was very apparent in this lake region that the flooding reason was the most important one. The Tonlé Sap can swell quite heavily in the wet season. In fact, you can see water lines on the houses where the water reached during the particularly bad wet season of 2011. Now, the lake has receded quite badly and there are worries of overfishing and pollution.

It was amazing to see the stilted houses and the floating villages around the lake. We got a little peek of this lifestyle in Myanmar’s Inle Lake, but this area was much bigger and relatively newer to tourists. We got many friendly hellos! from the adults and kids alike.

Stomachs growling, it was time for lunch. The tour we chose takes you to a local’s house where they prepare a traditional Khmer lunch. Our local was a cute, little grandma who lives with her son. Since her son works all day, she gladly welcomes the company of visitors. She was really happy to see us and had proudly prepared pork with vegetables for us. You could choose noodles or rice to accompany the dish. While we gobbled up our delicious meal, the grandma prepared for the post-lunch nap. It is customary in Cambodia that you take a nap after you eat, and I wasn’t one to refuse. Hammocks and floor mats ready, we all dozed off into a peaceful slumber.

When it was time to leave, we sleepily got up and headed back to the boat to enjoy another look at this giant lake. We then headed back to our respective hotels, satisfied after a full day of experiencing some country life. Highly recommend this tour, and thanks Stine for the recommendation.

Shiv and I got to bed early this night, not from exhaustion, but because we wanted to catch a sunrise in the morning. I know what you are thinking: Shiv is going to get up early? On what planet does this happen on? Yes, yes it’s true. If there’s a sunrise to catch, Shiv is ready to seize the day.