Instead of starting on the first day of my trip to Cambodia, I will start off with the reverse instead of the food that I have had, and, dared to try.
I took a break, finally, from work which is good to a certain extent, as the company enforced that one have to take 5 days of leave in a row, to ensure its employees do not get burn out from work. Thus, at the spur of the moment, less than a week of planning, a good and close friend and I, took of to Cambodia. We headed towards Pnom Penh for two nites and 1 1/4 of day (took Air Asia) then a local bus ride, 6 hours journey to Siem Reap. It was a rather interesting ride as one can see the lifestyle of the Cambodians. It is very much like Malaysia around 30-40 years ago. Like one in Malaysia 'balik kampong' via the old trunk roads before the availability of what one calls, highway or expressway!

Although, my food experience in both places are rather limited due to the concern of hygiene, and not wanting to get diarrhea (on a local bus ride???, no way), we played it safe by eating warm or hot food, even taking away the usual garnishing of cucumber and tomatoes. And, with bottled water.

Thus, by starting off with Angkor beer, not Anchor beer, would be best for this blog. There is actually no difference between both Angkor and Anchor beer, except the two different alphabets! The food in Cambodia is a close resemblance of Thai and Vietnamese culture, which you may find out as you continue reading.

The Coffee is wonderful and my first sip reminds me of Vietnam coffee, minus the dripping that takes awhile to just wait for a cup as in Vietnam. Sigh..such pleasure. The photo of the three different cups of coffee beans below are taken in Siem Reap airport whilst waiting for my flight back to good ole KL, it is, obviously, 3 different types of aroma that you can choose from. I can still smell the strong roasted smell of the aroma. And as am blogging now, the local coffee am having is no where near! Beggars cannot be choosers :(

The below is a local Cambodian fried rice which we had at Baphuon Temple. There isnt much ingredients except for some pieces of chicken with carrots and peas. Despite looking like a plain jane, it tasted wonderful without being too oily. Btw, the Cambodian chilly, like Malaysia's version of chilly padi, is one heck of a great one - spicy. I had a few pieces brought back to plant. So, if you are in Baphuon, go eat the fried rice. Tested and approved. No diarrhea. Hahaha.

This is Cambodian Chicken Rice - fried chicken. I cant tell you how it taste like as it was our tuk tuk driver who ordered it for his breakfast. It definitely smelt wonderful! We actually bought some buns as breakfast as we knew we would be spending the whole day going around a few of the temples. No regrets - wonderful coffee with our buns. A word of suggestion, if you dont know what to eat, eat what your tuk-tuk driver orders. We dont think you will go wrong, that was our conclusion. But don't eat the garnishings!

We had our first dinner in Siem Reap at the famous tourist street, there's only one! and it leads you to the Night Market, which by the way is nothing to shout about as you may think you have ended back in one of the night market in Thailand like Suan Lam Night Market!

We tried the below set which comprises of: Spring Roll which is the typical Vietnamese Roll with loads of vegetables inside. I would say that, no offence to the Cambodians, the ORIGINAL Vietnamese Roll is still the best. Despite saying that, it still tastes wonderful although slightly different, but similar. Btw, the set is for two pax.

This is known as AMOK, a Cambodian dish. As you can see, banana leave is being widely use in this particular restaurant. AMOK is, I think (from what we had!) consists of variety of 3 different meats which are, fish, chicken and beef, and a variety of mix vegetables (the first photo on the left in the front) It is being cooked with some basil, coconut milk and spices. Honestly, it did taste rather good for the initial few spoonfuls, and, we both didnt go beyond, I think, 6 spoonful as we got a bit 'jelak' with the richness of the coconut milk. All the 3 dishes tasted the SAME! The mixture of shredded vegetables tasted just a slight difference with a tinge of chilly yet nice enough. The rice is cooked from good fragrant quality Jasmine.

Dessert is made of 'banana' as just like local Malaysian Malay delicacy, Pisang Lepat. It is just a tinge too sweet, for my taste, but tasted rich in banana. The banana leaves which are being used to wrapped with further enhances the aroma of the banana.

We stayed in Asia Hotel for USD$25/night. If you are hungry, worry not, this hotel is located in the same building as KFC and in CBD (central business district). As you walked out of the hotel to your left, there is a row of chinese food, which obviously, we did not try as it didnt look too inviting. Thus, we opted for the food court (for local food)instead as my uncle recommends both the chinese restaurants and food court. It is coupon system, therefore, you need to know how much your meal will cost you before changing into the local currency (as in coupon). You would not want to end up with too much local currency in exchange as there is, sad to say, no demand for it other than Cambodia.

In the food court, we tried:

1) Cambodian Fried rice which comes with pieces of chicken, dices of carrots, onions and green pepper. It tasted more like the ingredients were all being cooked in tomato sauce. What they did was cooked all the ingredients separately and laden it on top of a bowl of white rice and topping it off with an egg. I find it palatable, however, not my friend as she took some doxycycline prior to lunch, which was late, and didnt find the food to her liking as it her appetite was enhanced by the side effect of the drug.

2) We actually went one round of the food court and noted that most locals ate the below dish. Thus, braving ourselves, as the ingredients inside looks rather familiar i.e. beefball, bean curd (fu chook), some herbs minus the 'spare parts' which are part of the ingredients. The noodle is actually maggi mee, however, you can have a choice of other noodles. It tasted rather different, just a bit sweet, but not too bad. However, it is an acquire taste as the herbs and mixture of spices are pretty strong. Did we finish the bowl of noodles? Not really, except for the fu chook! In fact, it reminds me of eating Thai Noodles, where the are few bowls of mixture one adds in i.e. salt, sugar, white vinegar with chilli, etc. I still prefer the Thai Soup Noodles. Yummy.

Now, our first night in Pnom Penh was rather exhausting as both of us walked nearly half of Pnom Penh! We were told to go to the river side (Tonle Sap) where all the happenings are there as in restaurants, pubs, FCC (Foreign Club). Indeed you can get a variety of restaurants from French, Local, Western, etc. We, however, did not seem to be able to decide, and after all the walking, we decided to go and eat, guess what?, PORK KNUCKLES!

We ordered the pork knuckle set for two which comes with two different type of german sausages, bacon and that was all laid on top of cut potatoes. They served the dish on a mini 'wok' which sits on top of a small cooking stove to keep the food warm. The pork knuckle is very different from the one that I have had both in Germany and Malaysia, which are the crispy version. Overall, the pork knuckle was overcooked which made the flesh rather dry and tough. However, I liked best was the skin which had some fats in between - the skin was rather chewy (the chewy nice) and not salty but well marinated. I was expecting (mentally prepared!) for some fats to ooze out as I bite into the skin cum fats, surprise, surprise, there wasnt any. In fact, it was so delicious but rather bad for health. What the heck, right, when one is on a holiday, out flies all the consciousness of eating healthy and eating right!

The sausages and bacon that comes with it is nothing special but rather typical of any sausages and bacon. The 'treasure' is right at the bottom - cut potatoes. As the mini 'wok' was kept warm, the fire below were actually 'cooking' the potatoes thus making it stick to the wok yet crispy. You will need to do some slight scraping (trust me, worth the effort!) to get to the potatoes. It is slightly burnt and as you bite into it, you can taste the crunchiness and fragrance taste of 'fried crisp' without the burnt.

This was our first breakfast in Phnom Penh that comes with the hotel accomodation. You have few choices of items such as sandwiches, fried rice, special noodles to choose from. Thus, on the safe side, we opted for egg sandwich and special noodles. We had a contingency breakfast standing by, KFC which is just a few steps away, located right next to the lobby.

The special noodles is rather like the Vietnamese Beef Noodles minus the beef. It comes together with bean sprout and lime for you to add on to the noodles. In fact, it comes with 'spare parts' i.e. intestines, liver, etc which I opted not to. The coffee was REAL coffee with a whiff of strong coffee aroma minus the dripping style of the Vietnamese coffee. In fact, it is quite close to Vietnamese coffee.

If you want to try the pork knuckle, TELL Restaurant is located at # 13, Street 90, Phnom Penh