Deliciously Me

I was super duper hungry as I ate bread and ice-cream for whole day only. After refreshing ourselves, we gathered and started walking for food! Unknowingly where to, we just follow our instinct and walked.

Not far from our lodge, we saw winter jackets and clothings on blue plastic mat and the clothes hanger stand by the road side. As it was quite chilly that night, I was tempted to walk over and get myself one but was too hungry to do so. Haha. I was far behind the troop because of ‘no’ energy to walk. Ops.

Finally, roughly 15 minutes later, we saw few restaurants! We then finally settled for Neak Pean Restaurant. And we were thankful that the restaurant owner speaks ‘understandable’ English, making our order wayyyy easier as some of the terms on the menu are rather hard to understand.

Don’t believe me? Tell me what’s sao mao then? Bleks.

The food came quite fast too. I ordered fried rice lok lak with pork. If you’re wondering which is mine, check out the lower left of the picture below.

As you can see, there’s a can of beer in the picture below. That’s because drinking beer is just like drinking water. A can of beer costs as ‘much’ (or probably cheaper) as the drinks we ordered. If not mistaken, that can of beer costs USD1. So go figure!

As for the answer to my question earlier, sao mao is rambutan. We know what sao mao is through the owner of the restaurant. He purposely went to the kitchen, grabbed the fruit and showed it – where all of us went “OH, RAMBUTAN!”

We finished our dinner, paid and continued exploring the area. We passed by this shop which I can’t remember the name but is similar to our local shoes shop, Vincci. Emily, May and I walked in immediately to check out the price. Indeed, it is WAYYYYYY cheaper – but we didn’t get anything there. Lol!

While walking, we passed by this massage parlour/local shop where this cute dog guarded the entrance of the shop. It may look filthy but it do look cute to me. I felt like giving him a pat on the head that time.

Soon, we reached this big greyish building where it houses many stalls. It was when we left the place only I knew the name of the building – the Central Market. We walked in to check out the good, souvenirs, clothes – and I ended up buying 2 scarf for USD2 each.  Emily got herself an elephant bag at a very cheap price! – which I regretted not getting one too. Ailing and B got printed Cambodian shirts while the rest got souvenirs for friends.

We lingered there until the place closed. Then we walked back to our lodge. By the time we reached our lodge, some were hungry, so off we went searching for supper.

Those yang hungry, ordered; while those who’s not (like me), sat at the side with heavy eyelids.

I have to talk about the food in the lower right picture (above). B and Emily ordered something like mix fruit dessert to try. I guess the unique name got their interests, but afraid that it will turn out weird, they ordered one to share. When it came, both of them were kinda disappointed. It’s actually shaved ice with cut fruit of dragonfruit, papaya, mango topped with condensed milk and cocoa powder. Asking if the dessert is nice, they said it tastes weird. Lol!

After filling up tummies for some, we went back to our room and have a good night sleep.

The next day, I woke up at 6.09 in the morning as I couldn’t bear the cold temperature in the room. I wore jacket to sleep and yet I was shivering! In cold, I tiptoed to the bathroom and quickly wash up and showered. As much I want to warm myself with hot shower, but the water wasn’t heated up yet as the lodge uses solar power for water heater. May woke up after I finished showering. We packed our bags as we were going to change room later.

At the lodge, breakfast starts at 7 in the morning (if not mistaken). The night before, we agreed to meet up at 8, so we only have our breakfast an hour later. We managed to get the long table, and were ordered our breakfast off the menu given to us. The breakfast is considered lavish as we didn’t expect to get such a good and healthy breakfast in any of our backpacking trip. So thumbs up to Jasmine Lodge!

Breads in Cambodia are harder than any of our bread in Malaysia, but we gratefully finished them up! Gosh, I yearn for that breakfast now. Haha.

After breakfast, some did last minute toilet break while the rest gathered at the stone table at the entrance of the lodge. A van waited for us, along with our tour guide, Ya. Mr Kunn introduced Ya to us, told us to have fun and bid goodbye to us as our van moved away from Jasmine Lodge.

Our destination in next post :