The Street Food of Siem Reap

We had no formal plans today so we caught up on some sleep and then headed in to town for lunch. This is when I discovered that if we did not have any commitments, Riley was a bit more challenging to get up and running in the morning, sometimes including a few false starts. This was also the day when I realized that before we could leave the hotel Riley would always first have to style his hair, must be the humidity or something. We found a tuk tuk driver at the right price and headed downtown, Riley’s hair was looking good and holding up to the wind. I find a hat also does the trick and is much lower maintenance.


We walked around and I spotted a street vendor in the distance, and he had 2 of the 3 items I was in search of.


Crickets and Tarantulas, now that’s some good eats. $1 USD gets you a handful of crickets and another $1 USD will get you a single tarantula.


Both are deep fried. The crickets are actually quite nice if you don’t mind the occasional wing or leg getting caught in the back of your throat, it’s always nice to have a beer chaser ready so they don’t tickle you for the next few hours. Otherwise they are just like eating French fries. The tarantula too is quite tasty with the exception of the bottom abdomen, which has the texture of runny toothpaste and is just about the most bitter thing you could ever put in your mouth.


I was in search of one more item before we sat down to dig in, and there it was off in the distance.


My old friend, the Durian. This would be my third encounter and little has changed. It’s smell is that of rotting human flesh and it’s texture resembles something that was once meat but has now started to liquefy. And they call this thing a fruit. I think it is best summed up that when you open the container it quickly attracts flys.


We walked around looking for a place to sit down and enjoy our newly acquired bounty, and when I saw this sign I knew we found the right place.


We had some great local Cambodia food first before digging in to our dessert.




I guess we can’t put this off any longer, yup, smells the same to me. However in a strange twist Riley claimed he thought it smelled good, but not good enough to actually try it.


Crossing the point of no return.


A small gag, forced swallow, then turn your head and cough, and it was down, yup, same as I remember. For some reason after my sampling I was not able to convince Kim or Riley to give it a try, I don’t know why.


Even our local waitresses watched in amazement and disbelief, you really just ate part of that? Why would you do that? Finished, I closed the lid and asked if they could give it to some homeless person, they instead threw it in the trash.


Next up were the crickets, which both Kim and I enjoyed.


Riley made an attempt, but this was as close as the cricket got. I was hoping the leg would break off and the body fall in to his mouth. But then I realized, with that durian sitting in my stomach, if he throws up I would not be far behind.


Tarantula time, I enjoyed a leg or two, skipping the bottom abdomen having already enjoyed that experience a few years ago.




Kim then gave it a try.


You have to be a little careful because sometimes they come back to life and bite you. I guess I should not have said this because Riley would not even pose with this for a picture now.


Riley instead opted for a bowl of vanilla ice cream for dessert. It was amazing and you could tell it was real vanilla bean and fresh hand churned cream. Kim and I had a few bites before Riley consumed the rest. We walked around a little more and then found out that Riley did in fact anger the Gods yesterday when we was running around and climbing over the ruins of Beng Meala. Luckily we were outside when Riley threw up the entire bowl of ice cream. It could have been the unpasteurized cream but it also could have been the lack of respect for the temples, and if that was the case those Chinese people are now probably dead. So we added ice cream along with orange colored juice to Riley’s "do not consume until home" list. Everyone recovered and we headed to the night market.

This is largely a craft market that is designed to get your money. We walked in and Kim found some nice scarfs for people as gifts, we thought we negotiated a good price and bought some. As we got deeper in to the market we saw the same scarfs priced lower then what we previously negotiated and thought now that’s a deal, we can’t pass this up and should get more. We negotiated an even better price and bought more. So chances are that if you are a girl you’ll be getting a scarf as a gift from our visit. We kept working deeper in to the market and again found the same scarfs priced even lower then what we just paid for them. We turned around and went and got dinner, having enough of an experience in the night market.

At dinner, Riley made a tuk tuk driver friend, who came over, pretended to rev his bike, did a little dance, and then pointed to his rig. We finished our meal and then went to find Riley’s new buddy. The guy was great except that it turned out he owned the slowest tuk tuk in all of Siem Reap, but it got us back to the hotel. I checked with the front desk on our missing items and they were still nowhere to be found. I can only image that the he/she now has a gift of his/her own from Cambodia. I wonder if I can trade her a scarf in order to get my underwear back. Riley and I giggled ourselves to sleep over the incident while Kim tried to ignore us with motherly disapproval.


VIDEO: Cambodia Day 4