Day 161 – Cambodia

March 15, 2010 – Battambang, Cambodia

Our first full day in Battambang is packed full of goodness.

We start off by taking a cooking course with Vannack at the “Smokin’ Pot Restaurant”. It’s just Eric and I in the class, so we get some great two-on-one time with him.

We begin with a trip to the market to look for fresh fish. And you can’t get much fresher than the fish we pick – the fishmonger kills and de-scales it right in front of us! Vannack is a great teacher – he shows us all around the market and puts names to a number of items we’ve previously seen, but had no idea what they were. We grab our goods and then head back to the restaurant to begin cooking.


First we make stir-fried pork with basil – a simple dish, but a good dish. Eric and I are a little humbled when we find out 2 chilis is about the maximum of our spice threshold, whereas Vannack would typically START at 6 chilis.

The next dish is sour fish soup with fresh tamarind. This one sounds a bit more complicated, but again, it’s surprisingly easy. Vannack won’t come right out and say it but he thinks my soup is more successful.


Finally we end our lesson by cooking a traditional Khmer dish of beef lok lak, which is cubed beef in a pepper sauce served on salad. You pick it up with a piece of lettuce like you would a fajita, and enjoy!


After all the cooking and eating we roll back to our hotel for a quick rest before meeting up with Moonie, the tuk tuk driver we hired to take us to Banon Temple and Phnom Sampeau.

We meet up with Moonie mid-afternoon and find out he has an entire agenda already planned for us, so we climb in his pimp-mobile and off we go.


Moonie is a really nice man – he’s very proud of his country and wants us to know all about it. He takes us along back roads through villages along the Mekong, stops at a few suspension bridges, gives us a lecture on political relations between Cambodia and Thailand, stops at a vineyard, detours to a viewing spot for hanging bats before taking us to our first stop, Banon Temple. A lot of the locals claim Banon Temple is the inspiration for Angkor Wat and although it’s a beautiful temple at the top of a steep hill, we kind of think that theory is a stretch. The last stop of the day is Phnom Sampeau, which is another Buddhist temple spread across a large hill complex. The temple itself is not that impressive, but the views it offers are amazing!!!


We finish our day by watching millions of fruit bats fly out of a cave in Phnom Sampeau and out into the sunset.


The ride home is a dusty one, along an unpaved road – our newly-purchased karmas save the day!!!