Cruising Cambodian Cuisine, street style

You can wander the street food stalls of any SE Asian country and see things you never thought to put in a pot. The most favoured dish by far on any Cambodian street stall is the delicious morning breakfast broth and noodles called Pho. I like to wait for later in the day and order Fish Amok because I just love to say the word Amok, not to mention the coconut laden soup that arrives laden with mysterious pieces of fish and accompanied by a bowl of rice.

The eternal infernal sound of a random cycle walla making his rounds in Phnom Penh, a slow sad haunting kind of monotone bleating out from a speaker located somewhere on the bike slash shop. For days I think he is a propaganda person, delivering and election promise or a party line. Eventually I traced the sound to the machine and the man beside it. In fact he is selling something that is considered a delicacy here in SE Asia but which rarely if ever makes it to the average birang style sit down eatery.
Pong tea Khon or duck egg foetus is egg-zactly that, a 14 day old foteus boiled alive and eaten while it is still warm, often washed down with a can of beer.

Mmmm, glad I am a vegetarian right now! Another local delicacy is crispy fried spiders, which again for obvious reasons I have not tried but here is a pic taken by a friend of mine in Phnom Penh recently. She didn't taste the spider either, and I am still waiting to hear back from her about the accompanying sauce. The spiders are bred in holes in the ground or else hunted down in the forests north of Skuon, possibly they became a delicacy during the Khmer Rouge years.

At this point you can either carry on and hunt down all the weird things that people like to eat in the comfort of their own home and which is equivalent to Soul Food. It's not for me to judge or to turn someone's kitchen into a freak show. There are still some delightful options for people who prefer to get their protein in another way..drinks are good! Coconut shake, the exquisitely golden sugar cane juice and cheap beer.