Now We're Cooking!

By Dana Martin

Written January 3rd

Last night, D-Ro took us to a Cambodia Barbecue restaurant in Siem Reap.  It is very popular with the locals and we were the only Westerners in the place.  No one spoke English so a friend from the hotel came along to translate and explain how to select and eat our food. We took a Tuk Tuk, which is a cart you sit in pulled by a motorcycle, to dinner. Once we arrived, we were directed to a table with three dome shaped grills surrounded by moats of boiling water. After ordering drinks, we headed to a long buffet of raw food. You picked up a tray and several bowls and selected as much as you wanted.  On this table, there were many unidentified foods that none of us had ever seen or tried before. There were various dried noodles, chicken, beef, pork, crab, shrimp, fish balls, beef balls, squid, eel, prawns, lots of green vegetables, and many more items. We took turns using the cookers, and put the dried noodles and vegetables in the boiling water. Some at our table struggled to balance the food on the dome and use the chopsticks, but overall it was good. The buffet was unlimited so you could go back again to refill your dish and get as much out of six dollars possible.   After our very adventurous meal, we enjoyed something more familiar:  ice cream at Blue Pumpkin, a western-style ice cream parlor.  

[Dr. Romeyn/D-Ro says "apologies for the fuzzy pictures--the flash on the camera wasn't working.  Just glad our stomachs emerged from the adventure unscathed"]