Food and night life

Hi Everyone,

We have been teaching again today and it it exhausting. The heat and the active kids really takes it out of you. We'll do a post shortly about what we have been doing at the orphanage as well as put up some videos (if we can work out how to do that).

Today I will write about the food and night life in Siem Reap. Every evening we walk about 5 minutes from our hotel into the centre of Siem Reap. The main street in town is called "Pub Street". At night, this street is closed to traffic and it is thronged with tourists.

Apologies for the bad photo of Pub Street, we were playing around with night settings.

Along Pub Street there are mainly restaurants (the expensive ones where meals are about $5-10). There is also a few shops and every evening a group of land mine victims play some music in the centre of the street.

All these musicians are missing a foot or an entire leg. 

On the way to Pub Street we pass a lot of cheaper stands where the meals are about $2-3. They don't look like much, but the meals there are delicious, especially the fried rice.

Cheap, but clean and yummy.

BBQ

Those wanting to spend a little more on a BBQ meal can go across the street and get an all you can eat buffet BBQ for $5. The $5 includes beer as well.

One comes to the buffet and gets all the food that you want to cook, then you bring it back to your table where you have a "mini BBQ" to cook your own food.

For people a little more adventurous, there are many other foods to try out.

Mmmmmm, frogs in marinade at only $1 each!

Snake, ostrich, kangaroo or crocodile is also on offer. We can recommend everything but the snake which makes you feel like you are eating a tyre because it is so chewy.

Well, that is some of the exotic meals available in Siem Reap. There are also a huge variety of local curries and soups. These are what we mainly live off. Stan has been drinking a lot of beer. This is of course to "save money" given that it is cheaper than water in restaurants. Nicole drinks water, lemon juice or "expensive" cocktails at $1.50 each.

Non food related information
Now for something totally not related to food, but something we found amusing while walking home from teaching at the orphanage. How does a fisherman check his nets if he can't swim? Well, in Cambodia, he straps a lot of empty 2 litre water bottles to himself and goes out into the river confident he cannot drown. This may not pass an OH&S audit in Australia, but we thought this an ingenious Khmer invention.

Ok, we'll leave it here for now. In our upcoming posts we will discuss some of the work we are doing at the orphanage. It is truly rewarding and humbling to work with these kids. It is also very sad because they are missing out on so much. We have also had a request to write more about the people we have met. People like Sinath who are trying to make a living despite the tremendous hardships they have survived. We will try and do this. Indeed, every day we come across many people who are suffering. Many of these people are very bravely trying to make a living rather than resorting to begging. It is hard to write about these people in a way that will personalise them to you readers. This is because it often takes a photograph to make their story "hit home", so to speak. Often, a camera is not the best thing to pull out when helping these people. But we will try and bring you as many "people stories" as we can. Some recent things we have done:

• Last night we took some drinks to some homeless children who were sleeping on the streets. Nicole had noticed that one of the kids was trying to get some water to drink from the air conditioner condensation hose at a restaurant, but was chased off by staff. We bought them all a can of coke. Not the best thing for their teeth, but the kids like cans as they can collect the aluminium and turn this in for money.
• At lunch time we often have people injured by land mines approach us trying to sell us books or paintings. We will invite them to have lunch or a drink with us.

Anyway, we'll leave it there for now. Have a nice day.