Otres Village night market

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After a lazy couple of days on the beach we were ready for some entertainment so as it was Saturday night we hopped into a tuktuk with Dan, one of our fellow residents, and paid 3$ to go to Otres Village. We hadn’t been there before but had driven past the road in. There are quite a lot of cafes and restaurants, look the same sort of standard as here, a bit rough and ready but busy with people, all ages. We turned off to the right down a dark track, apparently this was the right way but it looked unlikely. We were expecting a typical Asian street market, stalls of tat and food lining the street. Oh no, not this one! You go through an entrance off a really dark street, it’s signed Otres Market, and it’s all in one place with one entrance. Food stalls on the right with some interesting options, Indian, Mexican, Japanese, German, clothing and jewellery on the left with also cheesecake and donuts, a bar and a music stage. Terrible music, grief, unrecognisable a lot of it with the odd accordion tune thrown in and some beat boxing. Some seating and a posse of dogs trying to look appealing and begging for food as soon as someone sat down. Some people were feeding the dogs, so no wonder they were begging, but this obviously make the problem worse. They were a nuisance and also going through the rubbish bins, pulling stuff out and making a mess. Sam described it as like a bar in one of the Star Wars films. I thought it was this with a bit of Jumanji thrown in. You expected someone to come running through chased by some aliens.

We decided on Indian, dhal and biriani to share, 2 and 3$, very overpriced. The dhal was ok but very runny, like soup, the biriani was horrible, badly cooked rice swimming in oil. I had a piece of lime cheesecake for 3$. This was nice but sent me into a food coma. Drinks were more than here on the beach,1.50$ for a can of beer. So it was interesting to go as the place was very funky but it was a bit of a rip off. And I am sick of breathing in other people’s dope smoke. It’s everywhere here and I hate the smell. Yuk!

We went over the road for a drink in another bar, Hacienda, nothing special. It had a can of mozzie spray on the bar as the market is right in the middle of a lot of streams with the odd fetid pool of standing water thrown in. After Dan buying some cheesecake to solve the midnight munchies we got a tuktuk back, one of the better ones where you kind of sit on the back of a pickup. It coped with the bumpy road much better.

When we got back there were quite a few people at the bar. There was a new recruit, a local guy, watching Gary make cocktails and doing some himself, in training. He looked rather young to be doing it. He is. 14!!!!!!! That must be some sort of world record. How can that be legal, even here? He was working at breakfast too. Shy of us westerners, bless him!

Last day here today, we have to get our train ticket printed off (and hope it’s legit and someone at the train station can read it), organise a reliable tuktuk driver prepared to be outside at 6am and brace ourselves for Phnom Penh tomorrow. Hoping we like it better than the last time and have chosen a better area to stay in.

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