Cambodia Warp-up

This story was posted under the categories: Big Asia Trip, Cambodia, Cycling, Cycling South-East Asia

After leaving Thailand 2 weeks ago we started discovering Cambodia by bicycle… We wanted something different at least we got something different.

As you could read our second day ended with a 105 km ride, but apart from that painfull experience cycling around is a great way to discover a country.

FOOD
After being sick for a few times we kind of stopped trying EVERYTHING Of course we endulged ourselfs in the local specialities but we did not find many wow things. Something strange is that everywhere people are eating baguettes (hu are we still in Asia??) with a kind of french pate soaked in a greasy fat fudge. 

It tastes ok after 3 months without bread but it still is farfaraway from good old Belgian bread (or are we just being nostalgic…)

Cycling around gives us more appetite for sweets. Lucky for us they have all kinds of them in Cambodia. Watch the great way they bake waffles on a little charcoal fire. And an everyday classic… taluko. A mixed fresh fruit juice (whatever happens ALWAYS with some durian) with lots of sweet milk and syrup.

And there is Bogor, a kind of rice porridge soup with chicken and soya they eat al day long. Apart from that they have al kind of fish curries like amok, but we didn’t liked it that much.

So our personal top 3:

1. Of course the duck-embryo eggs
2. Followed by the taluko (our daily fruitshake portion full of vitamins)
3. Bogor (but especially the one made by the kind old lady at Neak Loeung market)

And now the real top 3:

1. Cheese fondue with a delicious bacon salad in Phnom Phen
2.  Steak Archiduc (at the same little french Bistro where we ate our number 1)
3. Cinnamonbread from the Pencil supermarket.

Yes, after 3 months you can realy enjoy eating something “normal”.

SIGHTS
This is a difficult one… of course everybody comes to Cambodia to visit Angkor Wat, and for everybody it is the highlight of their trip. Yes yes we also liked it but as always we were more impressed by other little things.

1. Cycling along the Mekong river. Ok not everybody has the opportunity to cycle and to get dirty as hell (lucky us hein), but it is surely the thing we liked most.
2. Beang Melea, one of the more remote temples some 40 km outside Siem Reap. We just loved the feeling visiting this remote ruines, without the busses of tourists you find at Angkor Wat, with everybody fighting for his turn to take a picture. Or just share his picture with ‘some’ chinese ladies   
3. And as we could no set up a top 3 without it… Bayon, an Angkor Wat temple with faces everywhere.

PEOPLE
Cambodians surely are special… After being in asia for 3 months we already know that asian people like to relax and take things easy. But Cambodian people take this relaxing very serious! They even have those 3 base-rules that everybody seems to follow.
Rule 1: every house, cafe or whatever has to be equiped with at least 1 hammak.
Rule 2: lying in a hammak is not that easy, that’s why you should start learning very young (yes yes we could notice how hard it must be to be a cambodian)
Rule 3: before you can obey rules 1 and 2, first you have to learn how to yell hello to Belgian white people passing by on a bicycle.

Cycling through the countryside made us almost crazy of all people shouting hello at us. Ok it is kind of cute for little children at the side of the roads (a least the first 250 times), but grownup mans sitting in a bar and shouting hello as if you just lost a part of your bicycle soon become annoying.  One morning we left at six and before the clock struck 7 we already counted more than 50 hellooooooooo’s…

IMPRESSIONS
One thing I will surely never forget about Cambodia, is the red dust… Before going to Cambodia we read about this in many guidebooks and i just couldn’t imagine what they meant with it… Now i know it for sure. I don’t know whether the dust troubled our minds or maybe we’re just becoming difficult. But cambodia left us with this strange non-feeling. We didn’t disliked it, but neither did it touched us in any way… It was just a country we visited.

After leaving Cambodia 2 days ago we are now exploring the Mekong Delta in Southern Vietnam. But before telling you all about this and starting a new competition we first have to close our latest contest… And the winner of our Jacques Brel contest is Yvo Vanhoeyvelt . Yvo you can come and enjoy your Burmese dinner when we are back at home (we promise not to serve you this little duck-embryo eggs :p).