Deliciously Me

What will you do when you’re feeling hungry?

A. Immediately look for food!

B. Whine and cry like nobody’s business!

C. Duduk diam and wait for people to bring you food!

We were hungry after touring Tonle Sap and Artisans d’Angkor. Ya heard our predicament and brought us to this nice restaurant in Cambodia. It’s called Bayon Restaurant and they served ridiculously delicious food!

From the overall look (exterior and interior), I know that dining at this restaurant won’t be cheap.

7 of us were seated on this round table, and the waiters started pouring us teas and bringing in food. One by one they brought in food.

Like usual, we pointed our dslr to the food for food-porn first but doing so drew many stares and looks from the waiters and waitresses, as well as the diners from next table.

What surprised us is the amount of dishes served!

There were 6 in total – something that we didn’t expect since it’s a free treat from Mr. Kunn. Mr. Kunn is the owner of the Jasmine Lodge in Siem Reap. We stayed 4 nights there. A nice and cosy (most importantly clean) place to stay for budget travellers like us.  

Thanks again, Mr. Kunn for the yummylicious lunch!

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After a heart-warming cruise, we were brought to another place to witness the art of craving and painting.

A popular tourist stop-by in Siem Reap, the Chantiers Ecoles (school building) of Artisans d’Angkor is the place where young Khmer learn the art of stone carving, wood ornamental sculpture, lacquer. Les Artisans d’Angkor is sponsored by the European program REPLIC and the government of Cambodia for the Cambodian to learn as a living skill.

The guy in brown in the picture above in our guide in Chantiers Ecoles. He explained slowly in English, and would pause here and there to gain our attention. We were led from one building to another. Each building has different workmanship produced by the hands. Some of the workers are deaf and muse. The way of conversing is via hand gesture. There’s even a big hand-signal poster hanging on the wall; in case tourists want to communicate with the workers.

I’m astonished to see the details on the statues above. According to our guide, a small statue will take about 2-3 days to craft out. Finishing the statue might take up to 5-7 days in total due to drying, lacquering, shellacking, gold-leaves-pasting, etc2.

Fact of the day :

Do you know that Artisans d’Angkor has been awarded the “Seal of Excellence for Handicrafts” by UNESCO?

Seal of Excellence for Handicrafts competition organized by UNESCO

Artisans d’Angkor has been awarded by the highest authority for supporting craft producers: UNESCO. Congratulations for all Artisans d’Angkor’s team who worked so hard to reach UNESCO’s expectations!

The expert panel from UNESCO awarded two Artisans d’Angkor items (Candle Holder and Krama Picnic Tray) with the “Seal of Excellence for Handicrafts”. this award is granted to product which meets high standards of quality, innovating, cultural authenticity, as well as social and environmentally responsible production.

With this award, I’m pretty sure buyers will feel at ease buying something. I would get one too – if the price is not a problem to me. Hehe.

I love the statues made out of the stone. It’s amazed to see how a slab of stone (like the stones below) being turned into beautiful home decorators like above.

Back to the guides at the Artisans d’Angkor, most of them are trained to speak in numerous languages. We met with a Mandarin-speaking guide (who guided a group from China) who teased us in Mandarin. When we ignored him and conversed in Malay among each other, he spoked us in Malay plak. Which left us in state of shock!

“Don’t think I don’t know what you guys are talking about ya. I know few languages,” he laughed before walking away to serve other tourists.

And we totally dumbstruck by his statement but buat bodoh to avoid any problems. Haha.

The tour ended with the guide leading us to the gift shop. He bided us goodbye before telling us that he is not allowed to enter the shop. To express our gratitude, we took pictures together with our Artisan’s guide and Siya.

Inside, many things captured my eyes. The statues, the scafts, the Khmer shawls, the baskets, the clothes, the paintings – all of them are beautifully made, but being jobless at that time doesn’t allow me to touch nor dream of having anything there. Moreover, the stuffs there are priced in US Dollar. So, T.T

By the time we left the place, our tummies were already growling like mad. We were brought to a very nice place for lunch which I’ll cover in the next post. Till then, byebye!

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.

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.. 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.

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