Phum Rŭssei Lŭk

The day we arrived in Siem Reap, we met some locals during a pub crawl who invited us to go fishing the next day - so we went. It was an incredible experience that I assume hardly any traveler in Siem Reap gets to experience, as it was not a tour, nothing that can be booked and nothing that is advertised. He was just asking us if we wanna come along for the ride.

So the next day we set off at 3.30pm, took a TukTuk to Prin Sok's (one of the locals) house, packed up his kids, fishing nets and a few of his friends along the way and drove to a nearby pond. Prin and his friends unpacked the nets, and started throwing them in the water with some good luck. By the end, we had enough fish to feed all 7 of us (+ 2 kids).

While the fish were caught, we helped to set up the BBQ, which was nothing more than using sticks and stones from the nearby plants with charcoal on the ground. Simple, but yeah, it worked beautifully. Prin even bought some air-dried and chili-flavoured snake that we also put on the improvised BBQ - it tasted quite nice (imagine what snake taste like, this is exactly how it tastes - not very helpful, but it is the best explanation i got). The fish was delicious, too, as we seasoned it with some chilli salt and ate it with our hands straight from the BBQ. Big lotus leaves served as plates.

We also ate the lotus seeds, dry instant noodles as a snack (quite nice actually, it really works when flavoured) and drank - I do not know how much - rice wine. We talked about life in Cambodia, Khmer Rouge, history, fishing, food, and had lots of laughter and banter (the rice wine helped, haha).

Afterwards, we all hoped back onto either the TukTuk or the scooters, bought some beef and went to one of the guy's home, who prepared some delicious deep-fried beef-mince-cashfew-chilli-peanut mix - something he makes and that is not on restaurants' menus.

When I was back in my hostel, I thought about the day and how simple, but with a smile on their faces, Cambodians live. Definitely a unique experience with incredible insight into the Cambodian way of life that I never expected to gain.Read more