After the last breakfast post, I realized there are so many places for breakfast; I should really have some variety in my life. This morning I went to the market and tried a new breakfast location. Walking through the market, there must be 15 to 25 small breakfast stalls on the Mekong side of the market. How do you choose? This one looks good.
I sat down and the proprietor/cook made a motion like "do I want to eat?" I nodded. I don't know what I am having. I should have gone to one of the stands where there were people sitting then I would have known what they were eating. This is an adventure right.
In just a moment there was an orange plastic platter in front of me, looks great.
Hum, lettuce for breakfast, well, I haven't been eating enough green, mostly white, lettuce is good. I tried one of the pieces of cucumber in the peanut sauce to see how that was like. It was peanut with light vinegar, very good. I ate the omelet with my chopsticks, a bit of a challenge. When I was just about done, the cook came over and showed me that I should have put the omelet and some of the leaves in the lettuce leaf, dipped that in the peanut sauce and eaten it that way. Another downside to not having anyone to watch.
After I finished, I watched how the omelet was made.
Figure 1 eggs into a hot wok
Figure 2 more eggs to get a smooth coating
Figure 3 even it out
Figure 4 add the filling (bean sprouts and pork)
About three weeks ago, a friend sent me an e-mail saying she was having trouble finding a job. I wrote back saying that I would put a special offering in my shrine and light incense on her behalf. Last week, she sent me an e-mail saying "your shrine really works!" She had been offered a job.
Yesterday I took a local taxi to Phnom Penh for a meeting, a three-hour trip on a narrow two-lane highway, with bicycles and motos along the edge mixed with a lot of very large trucks. On the way down the driver drove a little faster than the usual Cambodia speed. He also made several questionable maneuvers, passing on curves and when he could not see if the road was clear ahead, and not shifting down to pass so it took a long time to pass.
On the way back he crossed the line between Cambodian crazy and truly insane. There was heavy rain with a lot of water on the road, and severely reduced visibility. He was driving way too fast for such conditions.
In a blinding downpour, the driver pulled out into the oncoming lane to pass a long line of cars, although he could not see to the end of the line. While attempting to pass, he received a call on his mobile phone and looked down at the number on the phone, then took the call. As soon as we cleared the line of cars and were back on the right side of the road, I told him to either slow down, or pull over and let me out. That slowed him down for a little while, but as soon as we made it through the rain, he resumed his fast pace.
As soon as I arrived home, I made an offering to my shrine and thanked if for its efforts.
Yesterday my shrine saved my life—again.
I was about 300 meters from work and had just started maneuvering to make a left hand turn. Whoosh--a moto raced by me on the left; I could feel the breeze as he went by. Another meter into the turn, and I would have been in a very bad accident. It is my fault, I was making a left hand turn from the right hand lane, no one does that in Cambodia.
I will made an extra offering to my shrine.
I have been working too much lately, so Sunday was a day off. I decided to drive to Kampong Thom, about 2/3 of the way to Seim Reap (Angkor Wat).
"Why Kampong Thom?" Good question. Within about 50 kilometers of Kampong Thom, the many pre Angkor temples are virtually tourist free, unlike Angkor Wat. I would like to be in Kampong Thom on a weekend morning to photograph the old temples. To do that, I will need to leave Kampong Cham after work on a Friday and given driving conditions here, be off the road by sunset. In Cambodia, night arrives promptly and completely at about 6:30 pm. This moto trip was a trial run, to determine how much time the trip takes.
Samira, a friend working in Kampong Thom, had asked me to bring her canned tuna, as there is none to be had in Kampong Thom. I purchased the fish, gassed up the moto and headed off. I left at 08:20 and arrived two hours and 15 minutes later. If you are into numbers, it was 110 kilometers, and the moto averaged 49 kilometers per hour.
Even without a highway map, the route turned out to be easy. Most of the way the road was good by Cambodian standards. Just two sections were rough gravel, which is not that much fun on a moto.
The usual speed here is 50 (31 mph) to 60 kph (37 mph). I was driving a little faster than most Cambodians, about 80 kph (55 mph). As I came up behind an old man on a bicycle, he turned left in front of me. Wow!!! I just missed him. Ok, Tom, slow down. In Kampong Thom, I had lunch with Samira and then headed south on the return trip. It started out much like the trip up, but about half-way things got interesting. Black storm clouds and heavy rain were headed my way. I needed to reach Kampong Cham before dark so I pressed on. 
As I neared the storm, a brutal right-to-left crosswind hit. I slowed to 50 kph to keep from being blown off the road. A stand of short trees to my right blocked much of the wind. When I came to an area without trees, the wind just about blew me into the other lane.
I was now driving through a huge plantation of young (small) rubber trees. I felt a few drops and then a few more, and put on my rain jacket. I looked for a place to wait out the storm, but didn't find one. My only option was to keep going. I headed slowly into the storm, the rainfall became heavier and heavier, and I was soon drenched. I met a horse cart and two motos going the other way. The drivers were all in the same situation as me, exposed to the elements and WET. Luckily the road was good, and the drive reasonably safe.
I finally cleared the storm, and was amazed to see that two or three kilometers on the other side of it, the ground was completely dry. It had not rained there at all.
With 25 kilometers to go, I stopped to fill the gas tank. To pay the soaked bills in my canvas wallet had to be peeled apart. When I reached home, not a part of me was dry.
I was invited to have a snack after work with five of my female Cambodian colleagues. The woman who invited me asked if I had ever eaten a baby egg. What she meant was had I ever eaten a fertilized, boiled duck egg with a nearly-developed embryo inside. I had not tried a balut in the Philippines and did not intend to sample Pong tea khon now. After Len reassured me that there would be other things to eat, I said I would come along.
We drove away from KAPE on five motor scooters; it felt like being in a ride with the Hells Angels and some of these are real angles. We pulled up at an outdoor restaurant and parked our motor scooters alongside the other 20 or so already there. It looked like a Honda used-scooter lot.
We found a table and someone ordered in Khmer. Shortly a bowl with eight slightly gray-looking duck eggs appeared along with a plate of leaves and slices of lime and very fine ground pepper.
When you don't know what to do, be slow and wait to see what others do. This approach has served me well in Morocco and other places, and it worked here. The women each took an egg and placed it in the little egg cup. They tapped the top end of the egg with a spoon to crack it open.
By this time Len had placed an egg in a cup in front of me. As I held the egg to crack the shell, I realized it was cooked, because it was HOT. While I was slowly tapping the top of mine, Len open hers. I am sure I grimaced; the color is a nasty looking grayish black. I thought "I don't know if I can eat this…"
As my colleagues began spooning little bits out to eat, I decided to give it a try. "It won't kill me". I mixed lime juice and pepper and put a little of that inside the egg. "Ok here goes". There was not really much flavor except the pepper and the texture was just like a hardboiled egg. I ate slowly, I was wondering if I would have to avoid feathers and bones, but I was lucky, the chick was not that developed.
After the Pong tea kho, there was a tasty salad of cucumber, ginger and other vegetables, dressed with a little vinegar. One of my colleagues told me that if you eat much of it, you will be very thirsty later. After I had eaten about half of the salad, the waitress brought a bowl containing what looked to be marbles on skewers. They turned out to be tiny sausages. They were good, but so small. Then came a bowl of thin slices of meat on skewers, with the meat skewered through the long thin pat so it would cook quickly.
Everything was GREAT! Now I can say I have eaten a baby egg (balut).
Some time ago, I wrote about the cleanup crew in my house.
They are back on the job.
This evening I killed a rather large beetle and did not pick up the remains, I thought I will just sweep him out the door tomorrow. When I looked down about 15 minutes later, the cleanup crew was already hard at work.
It's hard to make it out, but there are hundreds of ants on the job. As I was focusing to shoot the photos I noticed that the beetle was moving. There were so many ants that they were moving the beetle around.
I wonder how much there will be for me to sweep out the door in the morning.
