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?

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. What looks like a lot of fish, is not. After peeling away numerous layers of banana leaves, desperation sets in and you start wondering whether you’ve been tricked. More frantic unwrapping eventually reveals a tiny piece of soft white fish rolled into a couple of fragrant basil leaves. Suddenly, a dozen of them make sense. Clearly not more than a delicious appetizer, a handful of nhem doesn’t really fill you up.

And that’s where krolan comes in handy. Apparently Cambodians go crazy over the sticky rice/red bean concoction prepared in a bamboo tube. But more peeling needs to be done to get to the sticky center and when you do, you realize what all the fuzz is about. Once the outer bamboo layer is peeled away, the sticky rice remains encased in the thin skin-like inner lining of the bamboo which almost gives the rice a buttery taste. Of course, the special flavor could have been from the bean-sized cockroach Tony found in his lunch. Oh, well!

For a more social meal, go for a Cambodian table-top barbecue. The clever metal contraption serves to boil and grill at the same time. For only a few dollars, you can usually find amazing all-you-can-eat buffets that offer anything from raw squid, muscles, liver and shrimp to tofu, fish balls and seaweed.

I’m definitely going to miss Cambodian food, but now that I’ve heard about Laotian baguette-style pâté sandwiches, I can’t wait to get to Laos.

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

The Mekong is truly beautiful. The river has a palpable energy which sets it apart from many other rivers in the world. It feels magical. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen another large tropical river with clear, blue water – it’s quite extraordinary. Gliding through the white sand banks and forested islands in a long-tail motor boat is pure joy. The small stilt villages and colonial river towns recall another age. I would go so far as to say that it’s second only to the Nile on my short-list of super rivers. Clearly from the photo collage, I’m not the only one who is enjoying it.

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 The Amazing Race. One of the teams was almost eliminated because they had the hardest time filling up the glass cylinder. But not worries. For the technologically challenged, there are fool-proof gas stations where you can buy gasoline by the soft drink bottle.