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.
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.
Cambodia's traditional dishes and innovative cuisine tell the story of a nation’s resilience. Photo / Mimi Field
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.
Cambodia’s largest lake, Tonle Sap, swells from 3000sq km to 15,000sq km during the monsoon season. Photo / Mimi Field
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.”
Fila, the Intrepid Cambodia tour guide. Photo / Mimi Field
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.
A delectable Siem Reap Khmer House lunch. Photo / Mimi Field
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.
Siem Reap’s street food scene includes unusual delicacies like BBQ rats and deep-fried crickets. Photo / Mimi Field
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.
Cambodian markets offer a variety of unique and exotic foods such as crickets by the can, roasted beetles, and deep-fried eels. Photo / Mimi Field
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.
Battambang, known for producing Cambodia’s finest rice, is central to the country’s culinary traditions. Photo / Mimi Field
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.
The Intrepid tour provides a mixed bowl of low and high-end culinary experiences, from dining at upmarket restaurants to enjoying roadside snacks. Photo / Mimi Field
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.
Roasted whole pig. Photo / Mimi Field
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”.
Cambodian cuisine is a blend of sweet, sour, salty and spicy flavours. Photo / Mimi Field
“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.”
Other things to do while you’re in Cambodia
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.
Why I chose to travel to Cambodia with Intrepid
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.
The Driver Srey initiative in Siem Reap employs female tuk-tuk drivers, primarily single mothers, providing them with much-needed income and support. These drivers are identifiable by their purple shirts. Photo / Mimi Field
