Today was MUCH more cheery! We went to an all day cooking class and had a GREAT time! It started with a trip to the market to get to see what type of stuff we would be using and for the guide to point out what was commonly used by the Cambodians. As the usual Asian market scene, it was like a grocery store, selling everything you could eat, every kind of meat, vegetable, spice, etc. Here are some particularly odd things: pigs blood, buckets of sticky palm sugar, they used duck (not chicken) eggs here, balloot (spelling? which is almost ready to hatch chicken eggs that were cracked and you pretty much ate the baby chicken), lotuses, all the fish was alive and was be-headed in front of you, leaving a small bloody pile of still squirmy fish heads in the corner. Gross.
We went back to our cooking place, a roof terrace above a blind massage parlor, and made 4 dishes: chicken spring rolls, this pumpkin meringue, chicken curry, and salad. The dessert (pumpkin) was a meringue poured inside a hallow pumpkin, which was used as a steamer and was steamed for about two hours. The Salad was fruit, chicken, and different herbs and vegetable mixed with this awesome spicy peanut sauce. I have developed quite a tolerance for spicy curry here and love it! The curry was the best, as Cambodia has a huge Indian influence (why they were all Hindu's back in the day) so curry is a big deal. However, unlike the watery/oily curry of the Indians, Cambodians and Thai (the Khmer people used to rule Thailand and Vietnam, and now only have Cambodia, which is why stuff is so similar around them) use coconut cream to make their curry creamy, which is amazing. There was lots of "Isnt this Thai food?" which the chef had to say the Thai's copy the Cambodians since the Khmer ruled Thailand first. We made out minced meat by hand, used a mortar to mix stuff for like 30 minutes, it was awesome.
While we were in between dishes, the cooks themselves were making lunch. There is this gross nasty fish that is fermented for 3 (yes, three) YEARS and you can only imagine how it smells. They put it inside a strainer in a pot of boiling water and the fish immediately melts into the water, leaving the strainer full of bones that are thrown away. Our chef said its way too much for anybody to try BUT Cambodians hahaha. Our chef also told us about how the Cambodians LET the French colonize them, as the kingdom was being threatened by Vietnam and Thailand and would have been taken into the borders of those countries if France hadn't intervened and why he loved the French people. Also learned Saigon was a Cambodian city until 1943, and 13 million Khmer people live there today.
That evening, Kara and I went out for drinks. In Siem Reap, alcohol was actually cheaper than water or soda, as we were told due to the competition between restaurants for tourists money. In PP, it was a little more expensive, but still considered a good price at home. We sat on a terrace overlooking the Lake in PP and drank for a while. We found a night market and did a little shopping , as they were more willing to bargain here and went home.
We slept great (thank you booze) despite the loud music and on/off AC throughout the night that had occurred every night since we arrived in PP. We made it to the airport and Singapore with no problems :)
Now it's study time, for the next week and a half before I go home. Its gotten even hotter here in Singapore, so I'm trying to figure out when to use the AC so I don't die while reading my school books. Just a few most posts and I'm home!
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