Sanitary conditions – not really

While walking though the Kandal market looking for a particular breakfast dish, noodle soup with green sauce, I must have seen 20 other things for breakfast but not what I was looking for.

I was getting hot and tired and turned toward an exit, along the narrow aisles I saw a young child moving chairs around for customers. This vendor happened to have what I was looking for; I looked at the conditions of the stall, and decided that the sanitary conditions were below my very low standards. I know it is hard to believe that I have standards after living in Cambodia for over a year, I do, they are very low but this stall did not measure up.

A little further on, I watched a boy back his moto out of the market, just about knocking over a person and a vendor's stand. As I made it to the street there was a vendor selling what I was looking for. She was dishing up from one of the pots on her bamboo yoke. I looked at this arrangement, not seeing a seat and the conditions of the water she was using to wash the dishes, I again decided to pass.

 I went home without breakfast.

Hoi An

The train stopped in Da Nang, we knew it was only a shot bus ride to our destination Hoi An. After Saigon we were weary of taxi's right outside the station. We were standing looking around getting our bearings and a man approached us and four more foreigners, all of were looking for the bus station. He was a minivan driver, he had to pay to park his van at the station but it was a block away and he would take all of us to Hoi An for a reasonable price. We all agreed and off we went. This ride would be about the same price as the bus and shorter.

The ride to the edge of Hoi An's old city was about 30 minutes; it was about a 15 minute walk to the hotel. As we crossed the bridge over the river that separates the old town from the new town, we were set upon by two professional hustlers. I took this photo and then the requests for money started. We hurried along to our hotel.

Anita would be in a class tomorrow from Tranh Diem Vy at Morning Glory Cooking School, we decided to go to the restaurant for dinner. Dinner was a great start to the Morning Glory experience, Anita and I were fighting over the stuffed squid it was so good.

After dinner we walked around the riverside area of the old town. There are several beautiful old French colonial buildings.

Pho Vietnamese noodle soup

Pho is a national dish in Vietnam and is Vietnamese noodle soup, usually served with beef or chicken. The soup includes noodles made from rice and is often served with Vietnamese basil, lime, bean sprouts that are added to the soup by the diner. One of our goals was to try this meal. Guide books and the doorman at out hotel pointed us to one of the many PHO 24 restaurants in Saigon, "this one has the best pho in the city".

Traditional Pho is normally served with beef or chicken but at PHO 24 there are many options; Anita had a deer-in-the-headlights look when presented with all of the options. It was very helpful to have pictures of everything.

Pho comes with vegetables that can be added to the soup

It was great!

Wandering around Saigon’s ChinaTown

After visiting several pagodas, Anita and I happened on one of the numerous street market, which was very much like a street market in Cambodia, vendors hiding from the intense sun under huge umbrellas.

There was the standard sleeping vendor

Fish and fruit vendors

People making snacks, we stopped to watch a young lady make small white balls coated with a green sticky covering. Of course none of us spoke the others language so we do not know what it was called or contained. We watched as the young lady carefully cooked the green sticky covering on a banana leaf grill, yes the grill was a banana leaf stretched over a dish of hot water with a heat source below it.

To me the snack did not have any flavor but it was fun to watch her make them.

Vietnamese Pancake

Some time ago, colleagues at DDD asked me if I wanted to go with them to have Vietnamese pancakes for lunch. OK, I did not know what it was but I might as well try it.

What a Vietnamese pancake looks like is a large omelet with pork and bean sprouts. I really enjoyed mine.

In Vietnam I attended a cooking class with Anita and learned that a Vietnamese pancake is not an omelet at all, it doesn't contain any eggs. The outside is made of rice flower and the color comes from turmeric. The trick to making a really good Vietnamese pancake is to have a well seasoned wok, have it hot when you coat it with batter and make sure that your batter covers the wok evenly. Then you let it cook until it is just about crispy then add the filling. Flip it in half and let it cook a little to warm the filling.

Anita and I went to a restaurant where Vietnamese pancake were their specialty, there were about as many fillings as you could imagine.

Pancakes are eaten with leafy greens, my colleagues showed me how to use a lettuce leaf like I used hubsa (Moroccan bread) to grab and hold part of the pancake. You can also add other types of green leaves (don't ask me what they all were) for additional flavoring.

Update

No, I did not have another moto accident I have just been too busy to blog.

Anita of Anita's Feast was here for six weeks and has headed back to Switzerland. While she was here we traveled for two weeks through Vietnam from Saigon to Hanoi. She cooked in Saigon, Hoi An (half way up the coast) and Hanoi and I photographed.

While in Hoi An, on the Vietnamese coast we took a early morning photo tour of a small fishing village with Hoi An Photo Tours Etienne Bossot

 While in Hanoi, we took a boat trip to Halong Bay a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

When we returned to Phnom Penh, I was back at work and she had some time to look around Phnom Penh. Last week the NGO I am working for had a retreat in Siem Reap and Anita accompanied me to Siem Reap. We stayed in Siem Reap a few days after the retreat to; you guessed it, cook and photograph.  Beng Mealea was the last temple we visited

 
Back in Phnom Penh I am back to work sort of speak. My contract with DDD ends at the end of the month. I did not take all of my vacation so I am on vacation until the end of the month. During this time, I will be updating my web site, looking for photographic work and sending out resume's looking for something new to do.

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.

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.

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.