Food Tour in Siem Reap

Any visit by the Vinick-Grossmans to a new country must include a food tour, if at all possible. I hadn’t really planned ahead and made reservations for any food tour in Cambodia. Fortunately, Siem Reap is a huge tourist destination, and there were three choices of food tours. So, we choose one, made a last minute reservation with Angkor Eats, skipped lunch and got ready for another foodie adventure.

We were picked up at the hotel by a tuk tuk driver. We were told that he’d be our driver for the evening, which meant that we’d be traveling from place to place. Awesome — this is how our food tour adventure started in Bangkok, and that was a terrific evening. As it turns out, the tuk tuk ride was a good omen.

Our tuk tuk drove us through a totally non-touristy part of town, which was very interesting. We saw all kinds of houses, both large and small, as well as shops selling everything that you could think of. After about 20 minutes, we arrived at a restaurant, where we were the only guests, as it was only 4:30. We meet our guide, Phat, who told us that we were the only guests on the tour. From my perspective, this was perfect, as it gave me a chance to ask him a million questions about life in Cambodia. (The guide that we had originally booked for Angkor Wat cancelled at the last minute, and gave us a substitute guide whose English was quite poor. As a result, he was virtually unable to answer any questions that were outside the “script” that he knew about the temples that we visited. Since I am extraordinarily curious about people, and view hiring tour guides as one of the best ways to ask questions about life in a country that I’m visiting, my inability to communicate with our tour guide was extremely frustrating.).

Phat was a wonderful guide — both with respect to Cambodian cuisine, and his life as a Cambodian. Honestly, hearing about his life was as good as tasting a huge variety of interesting Cambodian dishes.

First, the food — Angkor Eats has an interesting philosophy about food tours. They design their tours so that you get to taste between 35 and 40 different dishes in the course of an evening. Since it is impossible for the tour to go to 35-40 different restaurants or food carts, they pick 4 places and arrange to have dishes from different restaurants delivered to these central spots. I’ve never been on a food tour conducted such a way, but it certainly maximizes the number of dishes that you can taste. Moreover, the company is very careful to vary the type of restaurant that you visit, so you have four very different experiences. And, with the use of a tuk tuk, traveling between locations is simple.

Our first stop was a little neighborhood restaurants, far off the beaten path. We had five different dishes, all of which were essentially appetizers — a roasted corn dish, a fried round that had sticky rice and mung bean (fantastic), a wonton type of item, and fried tofu stuffed with vegetables. It was all delicious.

Our second stop was a restaurant which merely had a grill in front, and no kitchen in the back — exactly like some of the shops that we’d eaten at in Vietnam. There must have been a dozen dishes on the table — barbecued meats, fish cakes, papaya salad, and on and on. Some was fantastic and some was simply pretty good. But the variety was astonishing. In order to give us a chance to let the food digest, we stopped at a local wat. While the site was not particularly interesting, I was fascinated to hear our guide, Phat, talk about the willingness of Cambodians to make contributions to build temples, but the refusal to give money for building schools, and his dim view on the benefits conferred by the continuing support of religious institutions.

Our third stop was a table with stools, which was located on a sidewalk behind some food carts. Again, more than a dozen dishes. A number of sweets made with sticky rice, none of which were particularly tasty. But, there were two dishes that were outstanding — a mango, passion fruit smoothly, and a fried leek cake. We took a break from our feasting to take a tuk tuk ride through a night market that caters exclusively to locals. The market, which lined both sides of a single street, is an outdoor mall stocked with clothing and shoes. Nothing is really displayed, but is simply gathered into huge piles. People drive up and down the street on scooters, pulling up to stalls that look interesting. And, there are literally thousands of people milling around. Sharp contrast to a mall in America.

Our last stop was a brew pub. Although we were stuffed, we ate our way through some fish amok, a variety of tropical fruits, and some more sticky rice dessert. But, the real piece de resistance was a big plate of fried bugs — meal worms, crickets, water bugs, scorpions and tarantulas. My initial reaction was a flat out — are you kidding me? But, as I rather pride myself on believing that I’ll eat anything, I decided to give it all a try, and I mean all of it. I ate my way through tasting each and every thing on the plate. Once I got over the gross factor, it all tasted pretty much the same — oily and salty. I can’t say that I particularly liked anything, but it was certainly an experience.

During the course of the evening, Phat graciously shared his life story with us, as well as his views on life in modern Cambodia. Phat was born in 1969. His father was a doctor, and his mother was well-educated. When the Khmer Rouge took over Cambodia in 1975, Phat was 6 years old. His father was killed immediately and two of his younger sisters died of starvation. Phat was separated from him mother and older brother for most of the war. Over the next four years, Phat, like many young Cambodians, lived in a labor camp and slowly starved. In 1979, when the Vietnamese managed to overcome the Khmer Rouge, Phat was reunited with his mother. He lived with his mother for a few years, and then moved into a Buddhist temple with the monks, so that he could get an education and be fed. After finishing high school, Phat went to college to study engineering. However, the civil war was ongoing, and his mother couldn’t help him pay for the cost of his schooling, so he had to drop out of school. He became a tour guide quite by accident — in 1994, a young missionary whom he met asked him to drive to Angkor Wat, and then gave him a $20 bill as a tip, even though Phat didn’t speak any English. Phat decided to learn English, and then study to be a tour guide. Later, he married and had two boys. When his boys were 7 and 11, his wife died. So, now he is a single parent, working incredibly hard to send his boys to private school, provide them with English lessons, and nurture the dreams of his younger son to become a doctor.

Phat is a remarkable person. Despite the tremendous loss that he has experienced through his life, he talked about forgiveness and responsibility towards others (Phat does volunteer work, helping build schools in communities outside of Siem Reap). He was extremely open about his life experiences, but did not seem bitter about the adversities that he had suffered. He spoke about corruption in government (including his experiences of failing the tourism exam because he refused to bribe the examiners), but express a sense of hopefulness about the progress in his country. By the end of the evening, I felt that I had a better understanding of life in Cambodia over the last 40 years.Read more