Fresh pork in the market

Pork is my meat of choice in Cambodia and I think that is the case for many others. When I go through the market, there are numerous stalls selling fresh pork, every cut of pork you can think of and some that are new to me.

The woman is selling just about everything from the pig except the squeal, you can see tails, liver, intestines, raw bacon and many other cuts laid out on a reed mat.

In the next photo you can see brains laying on lotus leaves, it looks like intestines in the red plastic bag and pig ears on the right.

In the last photo, the lady is trying to shave the hair off of raw bacon.

I know this is the way it goes for meet in the market, I don't think on any of this while I am having my pork and rice breakfast.

Children on motos

In Cambodia the major means of transport is the moto, I have several posts on motos, this one is about children riding on motos. Children start riding motos very early, I have seen several that were newborn being held by mom as dad drove. The child below is not a lot older.

This photo has the whole family aboard. I have been told that there is a law that you can only have two people on a moto. Now what constitutes a person may be up for discussion

By the time children in Cambodia can walk their balance must be very good or they would not be able to ride on the moto. I have seen two or three children very scabbed up, it looked like they had fallen off of a moto.

The next photo is one of the only times I have seen a parent and child with a helmet. Would this be legal in the USA?

The child is riding on a box of water bottles, no problem he fits.

Children have to learn to balance early so they can ride. I have seen several children riding looking like they are very bored with the whole process. I guess they ask the standard question, are we there yet?

Ice

In a recent post on worms I discussed hygiene conditions in street kitchens, not to beat a dead horse to death but I will show a little of how ice is handled on the street. The ice that is in iced coffee, in tea, on your vegetables and that cools your fruit and meat.
Ice comes in long blocks about a meter long 20 cm by 15 cm, unfortunately I don't know how much that weighs. You can see that a load of 26 blocks looks quite heavy.

When it is delivered there are no special precautions taken it make sure it stays clearn.

The lady in the photo below has sawed 1/3 of the way through the block with the saw that she is using as a hammer. She taps on the rusty ax with the saw (hammer) and the blocks pops into two pieces. She is well practiced at this.

Depending upon what the ice will be used for she may saw a small slit in it to allow her to tie it up with a handle

So it can be carried home

If the ice is destine for the crusher, it is only cut in the length that the customer needs. It is then fed into the old rusty crusher which spits it out into an ice sack that has been used many times for holding crushed ice. This is where the ice in your coffee or tea comes from.

Iced tea or coffee anyone?

Home delivery Cambodian style

I was walking around my neighborhood and came across the home delivery lady. It is a little different from the fancy delivery provided by Whole Foods but it be it is considerably cheaper and the selection is a bit limited but.

This lady only has fruit and vegetables; I have seen some that include meat and some that have a three wheeled cart with a much larger selection.

This delivery lady has bananas, a reddish sweet potato, a type of bean and most importantly a friendly smile for her customers.

The next photo shows a lady with a plastic container with meat on top of the vegetables. I wonder what happens if the bicycle tips over. I think I know. 

 Street vendors normally do not ride the bicycle, they just push it around to carry their load.

Restaurant down the alley

Anita and I will be going to Vietnam next month for two weeks so I have been reading the Lonely Planet guidebook on Vietnam. The guide book talks about street food and gives advice to only eat where there a lot of motos, where the main dish is served from a very large pot indicating they sell a lot of this dish every day and don't drink the tea, because the tea glasses are most likely not washed between customers.

For breakfast this morning I went the restaurant down my alley, the place was packed, I checked out that they were serving from large containers, "Yes", lots of motos "Yes", lots of people "Yes" the only qualification is they are college age. My standard restaurant makes the grade in Vietnam.

I ordered the usual rice and pork, it seemed to take forever, and I decided to have a cup of tea. I took a tea cup that was turned upside down in the red plastic drainer, poured a cup of hot tea. There was one lone piece of tea bark in the cup along with very weak tea. I sipped for a while because the flavor is something akin to an old sock. They strain the tea leaves with cloth and I can only taste the cloth.

Breakfast arrives, it was extra tasty today, and it may be that I have not had rice and pork for three or four days. As I was savoring breakfast the husband came by and cleaned dishes from the table, as he did he picked up a used tea cup, tossed the remaining contents on the ground and set the tea cup upside down in the red plastic drainer. The same cup holder I had taken my cup from.

Hummm I guess the restaurant down the alley is more similar to Vietnamese restaurants than I thought.

Independence monument

Independence monument is at the intersection of the two main streets in Phnom Penh, Norodom Boulevard which runs north and south and Sihanouk which runs east and west. It is a major landmark for instructions on where to go. The monument was built in 1958 and is based on the form of lotus-shaped stupa, of the style seen at the great Khmer temple at Angkor Wat and other Khmer historical sites.

You can see that the top of the monument is shaped like the lotus flower.

Decorations around the top of the monument are Mythical serpents, or nāgas, that represent an important motif in Khmer architecture as well as in free-standing sculpture. They are frequently depicted as having multiple heads, always uneven in number, arranged in a fan. Each head has a flared hood, in the manner of a cobra.

Below is a nagas in front of a temple near Kampong Cham.

With the dry season about to start the blue sky in these photos will be some of the last I will have for some months.

Kitchen at the end of my alley

For breakfast I go to the restaurant just 50 meters down my alley. The family has turned the ground floor of their house into a restaurant. They server from about 06:00 to about 14:00, the menu is always the same, you guessed it rice, pork, eggs (fried or scrambled) and Cambodian coleslaw. The cost is 3,000 real ($0.75).

The ground floor of the house can seat about 50 people and there are four tables outside, so this is a big operation. They make the coleslaw in a large plastic container that must be 24 inches long, 12 inches deep and 14 inches wide. Some time ago, I watched as one of the daughters took large pieces of pork and sliced it into the thin strips that is cooked and served.

The clientele is mainly school age people come here for breakfast.

The first two months when I went for breakfast I did not pay attention to the kitchen. Wow it is an industrial strength kitchen. The kitchen is outside, where else would it be in Cambodia? There are six or seven charcoal burners with rice pots on all but one, which has pork bubbling away in oil. Smoke curls up into the hood which keeps it away from the restaurant.

Pork is bubbling away right next to several rice pots.

In the photo below, the rice pot on the left is empty, in the following photo the caked rice has been popped out and is being dried. I have asked several people what the rice is popped out and dried but I have never heard a good esplanation. 

Got to run, time for breakfast.

Eels in the market

I was walking through the market looking for frit and came across a man scooping eels out of a large container into a cloths basket so they would be ready for sale. Now I know where the small eels I have seen escaping for the drain came from.

Take a look at the following photo on the left side, is a small eel trying to escape the frying pan. I wish I knew how to prepare them like in sushi, smoked eel is great.

Chef Deb, do you know how to prepare an eel?

In Cambodia people are not as reluctant to have their photos taken as in Morocco.

Not for the faint of heart, Worms

A colleague who has lived in the third world went to the doctor to have his overactive collection of worms removed, he told an American colleague about worms. The American colleague immediately goggled worms/parasites (Don't do that), he just about got sick on the spot. Ever since that he has been very concerned at every lunch, "is this safe to eat" the other colleague keeps telling him, "living here, you have worms all the time, you just don't know it". The American colleague asked "why don't we get them in the USA?" Well there are some in the USA but the chlorine in the water and sanitation there keeps them down.

The American colleague also asked why we get them here. The answer to that was simple, hygiene or should I say lack of.

Hygiene in street kitchens is not the best and I bet that in big restaurants it is not much better.

Here the girl is at least using soap but there is no running water, only water in a bucket and you are not sure where that came from.

 

The woman below is washing next to an open sewer.

Once food is cooked, it will sit out until you eat it, and you have no idea how long that is. Remember it is always warm here. 

Another thing is the cloths used to clean up are the same ones all day long. I have never seen anyone use a clean one.

By the way, I just finished my most recent round of medication to de-worm, I do this every six months.

One year in Cambodia

WOW!! One year in Cambodia. It does not seem like that long in some ways and in others it seems a little longer.

In the past year I spent six months in Kampong Cham and six months in Phnom Penh. On my initial stay in Phnom Penh I went on a cyclo tour. Its has been about 37 years since I drove a cycle in Udorn, Thailand. It was fun to be in the driver's seat and watch the reactions of the locals.

Phnom Penh definitely has more to do but Kampong Cham was much easier to explore and it allowed me to get out into the countryside. Driving my moto really taught me the rules of the Cambodia road.

In my apartment in Kampong Cham I had a great cleanup crew, most of the time they were really on the ball but there were times they were a little over anxious but they did a great job.

I had a small shrine in Kampong Cham and it really worked. After my moto accident I have been thinking of putting up a better shrine here in my Phnom Penh apartment.

Now living in Phnom Penh one of my favorite places is the Orussey Market which is only a short walk away.

For my celebration for one year in Cambodia I went to the Szechuan restaurant, the kimchi is still great.

The only dark spot in the year was my Moto accident, which in reality was not nearly as bad as it could have been. This year I am concentrating on keeping the shiny side up and staying out of everyone's way.

Blessing

Cambodia is a Buddhist country; there are numerous pagodas around Phnom Penh. Monks take a vow of poverty and receive food and money from the general population.

Monks can only eat in the morning, up until 11:00. In the morning I see monks on the street providing blessings for people. Monks will quietly walk up to the front of a house or business, most do not have any footwear, stand there waiting for someone to ask for a blessing. If someone asks for a blessing, the monk will chant the blessing. Then the person receiving the blessing will either give the monk food or money.

I have been told that your head should always be below the monk's head, hence the position of the people being blessed. 

My landlord's shop

Notice that the boy has stepped out of his shoes to receive the blessing. 

Corner near my apartment

I went out early to take a photo walk, the homeless that live on the corner near my house were just packing their carts for a day of trash scavenging. There are about 15 people ranging age from a year up.

Everything they have is in a cart. Also in the cart is whatever they can scavenge. I have seen them with plastic sacks with leftover food they have pulled out of trash piles. It is a rough life, there is no water available on the street. I don't know where they get water. I do know where they go to the bathroom, all over the sidewalk, I have to be careful where to step. 

Later in the day the crowd was across the street. There is a restaurant on the opposite corner that has set out plants on the edge of the sidewalk to create space on the sidewalk for tables. The restaurant was closed and the crowd was fixing something to eat there. It looked like there was not much for lunch and it also looked like it had been someone lunch yesterday.

Mistakes

It's 11:00 in the morning and I have made two mistakes already. Neither was life threatening but both somewhat embarrassing.

First thing this morning (07:30) I grabbed my D100 (older camera) and took an hour and a half photo stroll. I went to the independents monument to catch the morning light. Well, there was an overcast so no morning light. I walked up along Tonley Sap (the river) to see what was going on. The sun was low and glistening off the water so there were no good photos there. Then home past where the moto driver sometimes sleeps. I guess he had not started his day of rest quite yet.

I downloaded the photos. I unplugged the camera and formatted the memory card. I sat back down at the computer and saw a strange message. It was a list of photo files with the message, These were not saved because they could not be downloaded. OH NO! I turned off the camera before the photos had downloaded. OK, I will just plug the camera back in and download them. Not so fast Tom, you were too efficient, you already formatted the card.

After I made a mental note to be sure all photos have been copied from the camera to the hard disk before unplugging and formatting I set out to the market. I took a long way around and stopped at vendor with good looking bananas. I asked the price, they were 5,000 real ($1.25). No thank you, my normal vendor would only charge 4,000.

I purchased papaya and pineapple and then headed to my banana vendor. Hummmm, her stall is usually right here where these motos are parked. This is not good. OK, I will just go to one of the other banana vendors. There are usually two areas with several fruit sellers who have bananas. There were none, NOTA. I don't believe it. Are bananas on strike.