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Published: December 27th 2006
The most practical way to reach Battambang from Siem Reap is by bus - the road is mostly tarmacked (unlike the notorious Poipet to Siem Reap road) so the journey isn't too arduous. But, if like us you want to do it the rewarding way, you have to go by boat. Admittedly it's a little more expensive at $12, which is certainly not the local price and you have to endure between 6 and 12 hours on a hard bench or plastic chair with nowhere to move (it's sardines). Or, as one of our shipmates suffered, have a 1 year old half-naked boy pee on your book and have your water stolen by his mother. You may even have to sit on the roof of the boat and get fried in the sun but you will certainly be bowled over by the resourcefulness of the Cambodian river dwellers who's children greet you with frantic waiving and jumping as your boat motors past their homes. Their houses are built on stilts, reeds are used to make roofs, carpets and walls and they use the river for fishing, cooking, cleaning, batheing and other ablutions. This lifestyle surely impacts on the infant mortality rate,
but its a fact of life which they just get on with. Share your food and drink with the locals on board the boat, play games with their children and remember that they have to make the trip almost everyday to sell their wares in the markets - you'll only have to endure the journey once and the beauty of the Tonle Sap lake and Sapong river will make it all worthwhile.
When we finally reached Battambang, we were hassled so much by motor taxi drivers affliated to the two main guest houses in the town that it was almost amusing. I came down on them like a teacher with a headache by telling them that shouting wouldn't get them anywhere and threatened to stay in a totally different guest house! It seemed to calm them down for five minutes. What the motorbike drivers really want to sell you is a tour of the countryside and points of particular interest, such as the bamboo train and the killing caves. As plans were afoot for such things in Phnom Penh, we wanted to do something totally different and opted to spend a day learning how to cook Khmer dishes.
The Marketeers
It's cutthroat believe meOur head chef for the day was Vannak, proprietor of the Smokin' Pot restaurant, whose cleaver skills are only second to his command of the English language. He asked our group of 5 to choose any three dishes from the menu which we would make and then eat in turn. We chose a fish Amok Curry (similar to Thai red curry), spicy beef stir fry and hot, hot, Tom-Yum soup. We began by buying the ingredients from the local market which both wowed and offended our senses at the same time. The wriggling, black fish that were beheaded and betailed in front of our eyes ended up in our amok, the VERY smelly fish-paste in our beef stir fry and some very amusingly shaped mushrooms provided a good source of banter for the day. We learnt what Chinese mint, fresh lemon grass, morning glory and kafir plants looked and should smell like and most interestingly, how much these items should cost! We had great fun finely chopping the herbs, making our curry pastes in the huge pestle and mortars and learning how to abstract coconut milk from the white flesh using just a muslin cloth and fresh water - I
thought it just came in tins! As well as eating our creations, we were rewarded with a recipe book which acknowledges that some ingredients are hard to find in European supermarkets and offers some alternatives, but the best thing of all - we didn't have to do any of the washing-up!
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