Saturday, April 11, 2009

Last day in Cambodia

This morning we went to have Cambodian cooking class. We had made a booking for it the previous evening. It included being picked up from the hotel, so at exactly 9 there was a tuk tuk to pick us up.

Also on the tuk tuk was the chef who would be teaching us. At first we went to the market to buy some of the ingredients. The market itself wasn't very special, quite similair to markets in HK, but they do had a much larger variety of foods.

After buying the ingredients we went to the place where we would do the cooking. It was at a pretty nice place, on a rooftop overlooking the russian embassy. Luckily there still was enough coverage to provide some needed shadow.

The foods we would be making were Cambodian style spring rolls and Amok Fish. We started out with the spring rolls, actually started out making the sweet and sour peanut sauce for the spring rolls. Was quite interesting to really make the sauce, involved chopping up and mashing quite a lot of ingredients.
The spring rolls itself was pretty straight forward.... Should definately be something we can recreate when we are back in HK!

The Amok Fish; once again quite a lot of different herbs involved so more chopping and grinding. Hope we can recreate this one in HK as well, but less certain that we can find all the necassary herbs there...

Afterwards we finally went to visit the royal palace (we actually intended to visit it when we stayed in Phnom Penh before). Really very alike the royal palace in Bangkok...

After we were done there we took the tuk tuk to bring us to the Russian market. Unfortanately quite shortly after we arrived there they started closing down. But Casey still succeeded in buying several scarfs, and we also succeeded in buying a cd of a Cambodian song we have kept hearing during our stay in Cambodia!

Then we went back to the hotel to book our bus tickets for heading back to Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. But both buscompanies they have contact with were fully booked until the 14th! We then found out that many Cambodians would be visiting Vietnam as they would have holiday for the Cambodian New Year. We then went to check next door where they sell tickets for a different bus service. Fortunately that one still had a few seats left for departure tomorrow! Not at the time that we would have prefered but still very happy that we succeeded. We will now be departing at 13.30 from Phnom Penh. And should be arriving about 6 hours later in Ho Chi Minh City.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hallo Jeroen en Casey,

Nice story about the cooking lessons!
Next time when I visit your place, I like to taste the springrolls or/and the amok fish made by yourselves,(jummie,hope so)
You did not want to celebrate the Cambodian new year?
Hope the busride is well to do.

Take care!
Catrien

Casey said...

I really wanna stay in Cambodia for the new year, esp after knowing that the guesthouse we were staying would hold a New Year party for the staffs and guests, it sounded so much fun!! Maybe next time....