Deliciously Me
Putting the 'licious' in everything
Archive for the ‘Cambodia’ Category
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.
.. and we stuck in a terrible jam somewhere near the Orussey Market on our way back to our guesthouse. I guess people were busy marketing there thus the terrible jam. We reached the Capitol Guesthouse at 11 in the morning. Since we had roughly about an hour to spare and our tummies were playing orchestra, we decided to drop a visit at the Central Market for food.
But unfortunately, we couldn’t find one. Weird right – in such a big market, we could find clothes, accessories, plants, raw foods, vegetables, fruit but no cooked food. Or in another words – no sight of hawker stalls.
Disappointed, we walked to the nearby street for food hunt. I saw a hawker stall operating at an alley, but we didn’t stop there for food. Maybe because it looked kinda dark or something like that – I also don’t know why. Lol!
Wasting half an hour looking for food, we bargained for 2 tuk tuks to get our way back to the guesthouse.
While our tuk tuk taking us back to our guesthouse, I took opportunity to take as many pictures as possible on the city of the Phnom Penh as we’re going to leave the city soon.
From Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum to our next destination, Choeung Ek Killing Field took us about half an hour. In the van, despite knowing that the driver didn’t us eating in the van, but I was sooooooooo hungry (as I woke up at 5.30 until 9 something with only few bites of bread in my tummy) and couldn’t help to have more of the bread. But I ate secretly and I SWORE I was very careful when taking each bite. 
The Choeung Ek Killing Field was situated about 17km off Phnom Penh city. Less vehicles were seen on the red soil road as our van drove away from the city. Houses and shops were soon ‘gone’ from our sight, replaced with more lands and frequent sights of domestic animals.
Our van turned left and we knew that we’ve reached the destination when we saw these words – Choeung Ek Genocial Centre. Our van pulled to a stop and all of us got out of the van. Few went over the ticket booth for tickets and the rest took pictures of the area. After that we walked in…
Woke up early at 5.30 in the morning – mistakenly for 6.30. Before sleeping last night, we’ve agreed on waking up at 6.30 am local time. But because I only adjusted my watch to the local time, not my itouchie. Only while showering did I realise that I was awake one hour earlier! -.-”
Even the rest asked me why I woke up so early. When I told them that, all of them shook head. Lol.
Everyone quickly showered and packed stuffs. By 7.15 am, we went down with the intention of having breakfast before heading to our first destination with van that we booked from the hotel’s lady boss. But due to insufficient time, we tapao-ed breads from the nearby stall.
As seen in the picture above, there were variety of bread sold there. After asking the seller on what type of bread (the fill) she sold and the price, Bee and I got a Vietnam baguette, a pork bread, and long bread with pork floss. Our van came soon and we immediately paid for our bread and ran to the van.
One by one, we got into the van. When it was my turn to get in, suddenly there was a very loud music playing and a group of people in traditional Khmer costume holding ‘gift’ walking by. Immediately all of us (who was already in the van) got out and took pictures of the parade.
It was really a rare sight – I mean who on earth got to witness a wedding procession when vacation-ing? We’re very lucky – even though it’s not the whole wedding ceremony, but to get to see part of it is good enough. 
Realising it was getting late, we quickly got into the van. I was very hungry, so I opened up the bread that we’ve bought and ate. Being polite (afraid of offending the local), B asked the van driver if he mind we eat in the van. And the van driver said…
“No eating.”
Immediately all of us stopped eating. We bear the hunger as the journey from our guesthouse to our first destination, the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum took barely 15 minutes.
A little wikipedia info on the museum,
The Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum is a museum in Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia. The site is a former high school which was used as the notorious Security Prison 21 (S-21) by the Khmer Rouge regime from its rise to power in 1975 to its fall in 1979. Tuol Sleng in Khmer; [tuəl slaeŋ] means “Hill of the Poisonous Trees” or “Strychnine Hill”.
Continued from the previous post, we went down to the Capital Hotel’s reception to negotiate on available tours for the next day. Then we bargained with the tuk tuk drivers on the price to Sisowath Quay. We read that we had to bargain first before alighting any tuktuk, so we daringly bargained with the tuk tuk drivers. Finally, they gave in for 3USD per tuk tuk. We took two.
