Cambodia: Street Food

We drove from Siem Reap (well, our driver did) to Phnom Penh where we went right into a street food tour. We were picked up by our tuk-tuk and headed out to our first stop at the FCC (foreign correspondent's club) for a cocktail and view over the Mekong river. In the rain, unfortunately, but you get the idea.




The top floor of the FCC:



Our next stop was ... insects. :| Neither one of us was a fan of trying any of them, however, Martin was talked into trying a cricket and a frog and I tried some snake. It took some convincing from our guide. Cambodians do actually eat all of these bugs - they snack on them while watching TV like Americans snack on chips or nuts. A ton of locals came up to this cart and bought bugs while we stood around trying to find the courage to eat just one thing. They have friend tarantulas too! No pictures of those, I had my eyes closed.



You have to peel the skin off the snake to eat it because the inside is filled with bones you don't want to eat. It's a good thing we had a guide helping us with this because I probably would have just tried to take a bite out of the whole thing.  Video below.

After trying some insects, we hit up the fruit/veg night market.  This was a narrow street lined with stalls selling all kinds of fruit and vegetables.  Cambodians like to eat everything as fresh as possible, so they buy fruit/veg every single day - only enough to get them through that day.  At this market we bought some jackfruit and some dragonfruit.  I really enjoy jackfruit but I think I ate too much of it this night so I didn't touch it again for the rest of the trip even though I really wanted to.



Here I am, helping our guide Sarik pick out the dragonfruit.



Here the woman is packaging up some jackfruit for us.  Jackfruit is the biggest tree-borne fruit in the world, the internet tells me.




After getting our fruit, we wandered into another little market selling, well, street food. Here we enjoyed some bbq'd meat skewers with pickled vegetables. Combining the meat with the pickled veg is genius - it was delicious. Sorry no picture of everything together; I ate it too quickly.



Then we got a big yellow pancake. It was filled with bean sprouts, ground pork, and a few other things. You eat it with lettuce and it's also delicious.



This is what the little market selling small meals looked like. Not much, lined with scooters. But filled with so much good food.



Our final stop was a seafood place. It's kind of a hot mess from the outside - crowded, small, super busy and hot. Pic below.



You basically order any seafood you want, they grill it, and then bring it to your table. We got curried crab, tom yum soup, and a half of some sort of white fish. It was all delicious.



Our guide Sarik also bought us some weird coconut-rice pudding super solid thing for dessert. He ate it with gusto but we couldn't get excited about it. It was solid and was kind of like eating the solid part of coconut milk when it's really hard.



Here's a close-up of the dragonfruit. There is also white dragonfruit - don't eat it it's not appetizing. The purple is better than the white but still not my favorite fruit. At least it's edible though - the white stuff really tastes like almost nothing. And it's so pretty!



Sarik, thinking our stomachs bottomless, also bought a lotus flower and had us eat some of the seeds. They didn't really taste like anything but they're eaten in desserts, stir fries, and used for tea.



Yes, my stomach rebelled later that evening. Martin's didn't though, and my discomfort only lasted a few hours. I have no regrets, all the food was amazing and every single thing I ate was a new experience that I'd hate to have missed out on.