Terroir Travel

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A scary bus ride, but made some good friends.

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I’ve been working on the logistics of this trip for awhile, wanting to have it all figured out as far as I could, especially over holidays. It’s really been a labor of love, as I love to plan, to solve puzzles. Travel is always one big puzzle, where the rules change frequently. Since we decided on Phu Quoc for Tet, all the best internet sources said that the ferry from Ha Tien was unreliable, but from Rach Gia was a sure thing, so I pre-booked a couple of days at the Palace hotel.

Everyone else on our minibus from Kampot took the shorter trip from Ha Tien…. The good thing was that Rach Gia does not see a lot of tourists, so there was really no concept of the dumbing down of the food here, and it was street stalls and popup restaurants for the days we were here. The bad side is that you couldn’t get a drink anywhere, just the watery local lager. The best part was…. No touts! I mean, none. We did have an elderly woman follow us down the street begging, but that was it. There was a grocery store nearby so Brent could get his Danish Butter Cookie fix, so that was good too.

There was almost nothing near our hotel during the day. It felt like an abandoned warehouse district. But at night, the chain-link fences opened, the corrugated metal doors rolled up, the tiny chairs and tables appeared on the sidewalks and streets, and it was a party. Each place had different specialties, served different things, so to figure it all out, we’d take a picture, google translate it, and then come back and order.

A lot of the street carts only do one thing, so we’d take a look, if we liked what we saw, we’d just say “vang, lam-on” (yes, please), hold up two fingers, and have a seat. We hadn’t yet learned to count to TWO.

The first morning we arrived we went in search of the ferry offices, to book passage to phu quoc. We stopped for a coffee

Which was delicious, and now I love sweetened condensed milk in my coffee again. Reminded me of my daily Cuban coffee habit from the Cream Puffery in Boulder.

As we made our way to the ferry dock, we walk by this woman grilling some pork that stopped us in our tracks, it smelled so delicious. So, we smiled, held up two fingers, and she smiled back, and called her granddaughter over. We were about to sit at the tiny table, but the granddaughter brought out a set of slightly larger table and chairs for us. It was funny, and a sweet gesture.

And then she brings us this. Two days in Vietnam, and we’ve had really great food twice. There is great happiness.

There’s a concept here called “broken rice”. When the rice is milled, there can be considerable breakage. This is the cheapest rice, and what you will typically find in street stalls. This dish was 25 or 30k dong, if I recall. About $1.50. When we went back the second day, she was so happy to see us. Like I said, there are not tourists here, so we were a bit of a novelty. We got the larger set up again.

On the 20th, we get on a ferry to Phu Quoc. It’s a pretty big boat, and there’s a flat screen TV showing a Rambo movie. The one where Stallone is in Vietnam, killing them. It’s really weird, because we are two westerners in a boat full of vietnamese. I talked to an Aussie who did the same trip, and she said they showed the same movie on her boat as well. *awkward*.

The Superdong

And now we are off to Phu Quoc for 2 weeks.

It’s unfair to compare Cambodian food unfavorably to that of its neighbors. Arriving after a month in Thailand, I thought it less exciting, definitely missing the spicy pepper punch, but that’s not a good way to approach it. The resources are different. Cambodia draws from a much smaller geography and population, but the flavors are still exciting and methods diverse. As always and everywhere, freshness of ingredients and how each ingredient is allowed to express itself makes the cuisine. We have found food that is excellent in every way in Thailand and Cambodia, and expect to in Vietnam as our travels continue.

Delicious, authentic, inexpensive street food was conveniently found everywhere in Thailand, from stinky, cramped alleys to broad sidewalks in front of luxury hotels. In Cambodia this was more challenging. We got lucky with some street food but the great finds were places that working Cambodians – and we – would consider a luxury. The best examples were places discussed before, the handmade noodle and dumpling dishes at Chilly Noodles and Ecran, both obviously Chinese influenced, and the great meals at Mie Cafe in Siem Reap. It’s the middle ground between everyday peoples eats and the luxury tourist restaurants that’s largely missing in Cambodia.

I feel it’s also unfair to describe Cambodian food, as so often seems to be done, as lower quality rip offs of Thai or Vietnamese foods. Let’s face it, the political boundaries that we use to describe the peoples and countries of SE Asia today are hopelessly inadequate to explain the culinary results of centuries of cultural interactions. An easy but accurate thing to say would be that, at this point in time, almost everybody has borrowed from everybody else. Economics more than anything explain why it’s harder to get exciting food in Cambodia than other places. So no bitching guys, and I say this to myself, do your homework and you will love the well made food everywhere you go. Ok, full disclosure, I haven’t been to Siberia or Antarctica, where all the well made food may be illegally smuggled for all I know.

post by Brent