Author Archive
Happy 40th Birthday, Tony!
By Thomas on March 9, 2010 | 6 Comments »
Finally! Beverly and I are so sick of hearing that we are in our forties whereas YOU are in your thirties. Well, Sir, welcome to the club. It hurts, doesn’t it?
Cambodian Treats
By Thomas on March 8, 2010 | No Comments »
As our time here is coming to an end, I think about all the great food Cambodia offers. Crunchy frogs, scrumptious Amok and tasty tarantulas have made up only part of our diet, and when other travelers ask me for a food recommendation, I always come up with a few interesting treats.
There’s nhem, river fish zinged up with ginger, lime, chili, garlic and probably MSG. The snack is then neatly wrapped in banana leaves and sold by the dozen. But don’t be fooled, the packages are deceptive. » Continue reading this post »
What a Dollar Can Buy You
By Thomas on March 6, 2010 | 5 Comments »
If you are traveling on a tight budget, Cambodia can be a challenge. Excursions, temples and monuments can eat up quite a chunk of money, but I wasn’t prepared to spend even more on food. Sure, if you live off of noodle soup and little snacks in street-side stalls, you can get by. But Tony and I like our Fish Amok and Cambodian beer.
Cambodian Kramas
We ended up spending almost 40 percent of our monthly budget on food, more than we spent on hotels. There definitely seems to be a trend. Food prices are rising quickly all over the world. Especially fruit can be shockingly expensive. It’s crazy to pay $1 for a mango at home, but it’s even crazier to spend that much in Southeast Asia. Luckily, that dollar can buy you plenty of other things. Check out what you can get for around a buck:
- 2 glasses of draught Angkor beer during Happy Hour
- 1 ginger-stuffed barbecued frog
- 1 krama, traditional scarf worn around head
- 3 fried tarantulas
- 20 minutes of fish pedicure
- 4 liters (1 gal.) of drinking water
- 1 T-shirt at Angkor Wat (pay $1.50 for a slightly better quality)
- 2 cans of Coca Cola
- 1 kg of clean laundry
- 2 dragon fruit or 50 grams of Danish blue cheese
Filling Up
By Thomas on March 3, 2010 | 2 Comments »
Cruising around on our mopeds through the Cambodian countryside, we have had a hard time spotting gas stations. Nothing looks like a Shell with an air-conditioned convenience store. Instead, fuel hand pumps present the latest technology in these regions.
Whenever I see a hand pump sticking out of a rusty fuel barrel, I think of an episode of » Continue reading this post »
Tasty Tarantulas
By Thomas on February 27, 2010 | 1 Comment »
One of the more exotic snacks in Cambodia are deep-fried tarantulas. A food born out of necessity during the meager years of the Pol Pot regime, Cambodians enjoy their crisp tarantulas to this day.
Tony, Beverly and I are quite experimental when it comes to food. But there are limits. The thought of stuffing a sizeable hairy spider into our mouths was almost too much to bear. But only almost. Watch this short video and see who’s enjoying themselves beyond what you’d consider normal.
