Terroir Travel

There are a few options to get from Siem Reap to Phnom Penh. The bus is the cheapest, but the speedboat is the coolest. One thing to consider is that this is one tight ship. I don’t mean clean or well maintained, I mean that it’s cambodian-sized. The Germans sitting behind us held us personally responsible for this situation, which was uncomfortable on more than one level. The inside of the boat is akin to riding in a tin can hurtling down the Tonle Sap lake and river.

Close quarters, and there was some leaking coming in from one of the welds, so water was shloshing around on the floor of the boat. Bad news for anyone that left items on the floor when they went up top. Atop the tin can was this situation. There’s a guy there on the side with a white shirt on- he’s the porter, of sorts. You can’t see it, but he has a small cooler of beer that he carries around selling at a nice profit.

After 6 hours of riding on the boat, many people were very sunburnt. But they had legroom, and life’s a trade off. We checked into our guesthouse and headed a few blocks to the Foreign Corespondents Club, which was very civilized. Seriously, check out the single ice log in my Gin & Tonic. That’s mixologist-worthy. And yet, not a hipster in sight.

Although Ellen’s death was the necessary kick in the pants to get busy livin’, I have been remiss in updating on her visits in Asia. The first scattering In Thailand I didn’t post about, because I probably did something somewhere I shouldn’t have, but I did update her sister on the whereabouts. I didn’t deface or defile anything, and I hope the Buddhas were accepting of the offering. In any case, it was made with compassion and thought.

Here’s a pic that Leslie sent in the meantime. This is not Ellen in Cambodia, this is Ellen in California.

Onto Cambodia. As I’ve mentioned, despite the fork in our trajectories, one commonality has always been the love of cooking and food. When we visited the garden in the preceding post, I knew that I could not scatter her there, but nearby seemed close enough. On the walk over, a frangipani flower dropped on me, wanting to be part of the event.

I found a bamboo stand in a tranquil corner, affixed the flower to a stalk, said a few words, and left a bit of her there. She would have liked Cambodia- other than tuk-tuk drivers, it’s pretty difficult to ascribe suspicious motives to most of the people. Or, that would have driven her crazy, who knows. Anyway, she’d have liked the spice garden.

So now she’s in Thailand and Cambodia. We enter Vietnam in about 5 days (I’d better get cracking securing a VPN…), and I’ll have to find some land on which to memorialize her there. No water.

Last, a little humor- Ellen had really great decorating taste, it always impressed me how she could beautify a space. Probably better than this company

Just because we are traveling, and every night is date night (awww), we decided to have a tourist-trap date. We started at Miss Wong, a Shanghai themed cocktail lounge. All deep red and black lacquer, with fun drinks and good food. Also known as one of the most gay friendly joints in town, it was cool and sleek, and they really exploit the theme. This is the back of the cocktail menu that’s printed on a fan, and a pic of my passion fruit martini, which was delicious.

After Miss Wong’s, we walked around the old market area, and I convinced Brent to do this- $1 for a fishy pedicure and a beer or coke, which alone cost… $1, so basically, it’s free fish massage! Or, we are free fish food. Either way. My feet were not as exciting as Brent’s, pictured here. I had to get him to lift his feet from the tank so the fish would come to mine. Despite the fact that this was indeed a silly tourist thing, it was really good. We have been walking lots, and this invigorated and exfoliated our tired dogs. It did tickle like mad for the first minute!

We wandered around old town a bit more, stopped at a French bistro for a small bite, then a tuk tuk back to the hotel. We arranged for a driver to come pick us up the next morning for a trip up to Angkor, but he didn’t show. Fortunately, our guesthouse called a replacement who was great, and we spent another day temple touring, but that’s for another post.

The overnight sleeper to Bangkok is certainly the way to go, for no other reason than you get to stretch out. Here’s the train during the day:

The top berths there fold out, and the seats below are made into a bed by the porter. We chose to pay about 300 baht less for the no air con train, and it was definitely worth it. It was actually chilly at night, despite the lightweight blanket provided, and I was happy that we packed a bed sheet, as it gave me just enough additional coverage.

Here’s the menu of food available on the train. We ate just before we got on, and did not order or bring any food with us. Come morning, this was a bit shortsighted of us, because we were very hungry, and the vendors that walk the train only had some pretty tired looking meats for sale. At least we had lots of water.

We arrived in Bangkok around 11 am, and our hostel, which was chosen for its proximity to the train station and to Chinatown was ready for us to check in, wash our dirty faces and drop our packs. In a few minutes we were headed for chow from the nearby street carts (fantastic fried chicken, and okay roasted duck noodle soup) then a nap, because sleeping on the train wasn’t as awesome as I thought it would be. I was in constant fearof falling out of my narrow berth, despite the straps that I assume were there to keep that from happening.

But when we woke- Chinatown/Yaowarat Night Market! One lane on each side is kind of blocked off for pedestrians, but these are loose rules. Carts are side by side by side, with all kinds of soups, seafood, noodles, dumplings- it’s a bit dizzying.

We ate many dumplings, of which I took zero pics.

We went back to Chote Chitr the next day for more prawns, this time we got the red curry prawns with long beans again, but also the yellow curry ones. Oddly, we got 3 prawns each instead of 2 like last time.

Then, Chinatown again…

Brent got a delicious seafood noodle soup, filled with squid and shrimp, but I didn’t get a pic.

Dogs in clothes. I can’t tell you how many dogs in clothes we’ve seen here. We even saw a cat in clothes, but I couldn’t stop laughing long enough to get a pic, and it trotted off, no doubt highly embarrassed. The dogs don’t seem to mind, but why is this so popular all over Thailand?

And pre-sunrise on the 20th, we are off to Cambodia! Zoooooom!

We are still basking in the glow of the elephant park, it was that special.

In the meantime, we are returning to our gluttonous mission in Chiang Mai with lots of delicious food. I’m going to pop up some pics of what we’ve found here, it’s been a great food city, with Issan influence, some Burmese, and the local specialty, Khao Soi.

First, the Thapae gate night market. An amazing array of booths, with interesting offerings. Here’s the grilled quail

50 baht for each. ($1.50), delicious, but a little dry. The soy/chili/vinegar dipping sauce that it comes with was adequate compensation.

Here’s the winner for best green papaya salad of the market. He gets bonus points for the tiara.

The market is pretty busy, there are all kinds of vendors, and plenty of massage chairs. It looks pretty swamped in this pic, but as the night goes on, it gets much more crowded, or so we are told, crowds are not our thing at all. We sampled lots of other things we didn’t get pics of, mostly because my hand were super sticky, and I used up all my tissues. I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this before, and I probably will again, but definitely bring your own TP, and carry tissue packs with you. You never know.

On Saturday the 14th, we headed to the famed Khao Soi Lam Duan across the river. Only about a 20 minute walk from our hotel, it was indeed the richest broth we’ve had yet for this dish, really deep and satisfying. We got one pork and one chicken, both outstanding. I tried to get the satay, which is also supposed to be great, but it wasn’t available for reasons I didn’t fully understand. A postprandial walk along the river was a good prelude to a nap.

For dinner we took a tip from another blogger and went to Huen Phen in the old town. This was probably the best meal we’ve had all trip. The prawns from Chote Chitr still rank as best dish (and tonight we take the sleeper train back to Bangkok, and I suspect that we will be returning), everything about our meal here was a delight.
Here’s the view from the street, it’s set back so you have to keep an eye out:

Chili Dip with Pork- there were many options for chili dips, Brent picked the porky one. I know it’s not much to look at, but the flavor was spicy, the texture creamy and the blanched veg provided a mild crunch. 70 baht.

Pomelo Salad. This was a great deviation from the many somtum, or green papaya salads we’ve had. There were large chunks of pomelo, thinly sliced lemongrass. We are going back here for lunch today…. 60 baht.

And eggplant with sliced pork. Again, may not look exciting, but you put it in your mouth and your eyes fly open with surprise, and you start trying to think of ways to keep it all to yourself. Or at least that’s what I did. 70 baht, we should have ordered another.

There are two things that I’ve been on the lookout for since we’ve been in Thailand, and I found them here in Chiang Mai: 1) Burmese tea Leaf Salad- since trying this at Mandalay in San Francisco, and learning to make it (thanks Molly B, for making and providing the fermented leaves!), and 2) Miang Kham, which I had at a now defunct restaurant in Seattle while attending the ACS conference a couple of years ago., and just cannot find in the US.

This version had a lot more cabbage than the SF version ( which actually has none), but the flavor of the leaves was the same, and there was the fried garlic and peanuts for crunch, and tomatoes for juiciness.

Miang Kham is served in restaurants on a plate as little piles of goodies- coconut, palm sugar, limes, shallots, etc. and you assemble yourself. It’s also a popular street food, pre-wrapped and threaded on a skewer. It’s a nice little bite, especially when most street food is very meat-centered, it’s good to have a little produce.

There are 2 kinds here- the bottom one is with the raw la lot leaf, and the upper one is with a blanched leaf. The raw leaf was better, we both agreed. 10 baht for 4. I know the pic has only 3, but what can I say, we are pigs.

One stop we had to make was SP Chicken. It was the inspiration for a restaurant in Portland, OR called Pok Pok. The chicken is stuffed with lemongrass and garlic and roasted, and served with dipping sauces. It wasn’t the best roast chicken I’ve ever had (Zuni cafe still holds that place, and RIP Judy Rodgers), but it was damed good. I like that they use small birds, and while we sat waiting out a rainstorm were able to watch the whole process of threading birds onto the 3 pronged skewer, placing on the vertical spit, turning, patting, basting.

Salted crab somtum was a great accompaniment.

We have to check out of the hotel now, we are headed back to Huen Phen for lunch and more pomelo salad, then the overnight train to Bangkok. We opted for the 2nd class with no aircon so we can open the window, which you can’t do on the aircon trains.

I apologize for any typos and weird autocorrects- I’m rushing out the door!