Siem Reap II

Last night, dunno why, I thought I'd try an Indian restaurant - Taj Mahal - which gets a good write up in LP & elsewhere. But it really wasn't that great. I ordered a meat thali, lassi & Angkor beer. The beer & lassi were fine; the curries (chicken, beef, lentil) were of a similar fluidity i.e a lot of sauce, all of which seemed fairly similar, & only about 3 bits of meat in the meat curries. The meat was also quite chewy, to the extent that much of it seemed to become stuck in my teeth. Luckily there were plenty of toothpicks available, and to the restaurant's credit, they were the best I've encountered in Cambodia!

So tonight I wised up & went to a Khmer restuarant, Arun. It was great food; I had some uncooked/unfried vegetarian spring rolls, amoc (a sort of fish curry - apparently one of Cambodia's national dishes), steamed rice & 2 cans of Fanta - for 28,000 R (=$7 USD)

Today I ventured forth on the bicycle to see the temples of Angkor. Very impressive - even though I covered nearly 20km on the bike, and probably walked nearly as far again, I've only seen a fraction of what's there to see (I've yet to actually visit Angkor Wat, reputedly the most stunning & best preserved of all the temples here.) But what I saw today - Phnom Bakheng & much of Angkor Thom - was fascinating. The only thing is that it's very hot here at present, which seems at odds with the image I had of the place - cool jungle, dark & dank, creepers, strange & exotic creatures crawling & flying everyhwere. Instead, it's boiling hot, really bright, and pretty exhausting work. So I'll explore the place at a leisurely pace, maybe taking up to a week to get my fill of things.

Lunch today was some pineapple & some sticky rice which you can buy at the side of the road for about 500 R. The rice comes jammed into a tube of bamboo, the sides of which you peel away to get at the rice. It has a slightly sweet taste, and also contains currant-like (I hope they were) black bits. It's very sticky - afterwards my fingers felt as they do after a mishap with the super glue.