Culinary Capers

So today was the grad students' last day with us. Kurt left early in the morning and Terri, Kevin, and Juenan left after lunch. We had a farewell lunch for them at Romdeng (all thanks to Bill!) and didn't hold back on ordering every delicious dish they had. One of the highlights was the fried tarantulas. I had a leg and then sampled the head, fangs and all. It tasted fine, more texture than taste with the same texture as soft-shell crab, which is pretty much what it is. I also had a set meal for $6.50, a lot of food for such a great deal, including soup, a main dish, and a dessert (banana crepes with coconut gelato!).


Tarantulas, yummmm!

After lunch we all went back home for a final farewell to the grad students. Once they and Toon (?), our driver, left the compound everyone headed back inside and we spent the next hour and a half or so rearranging the office. The current arrangement is much less cluttered and more organized. In the afternoon Nancy and I went to Beautiful Shoes to get some custom shoes made. They only cost $30 for custom-made leather shoes in any design and color/pattern you want. All you have to do is take a picture of the shoes to them and they'll be ready in a week or so.


The VM Project Team minus Kurt, Yaro, and Yasemin

Sokly took Nancy, Steve, Ed, and I to the National Stadium where we took a brief tour of the complex in the fading twilight. Rows of Cambodians lined the top area of around the stadium track doing various forms of aerobic exercises. It was amazing to see the stadium and the huge concrete cantilevers that Vann Molyvann employed in the prodigiously throughout the complex. After watching the National Swimming Team practice in the Olympic pool, we watched the national basketball team scrimmage in the almost abandoned stadium and walked around to some fruit stands on the street. We stopped at one because Sokly said it had the best fruit and bought dragonfruit, longan, and oranges. The longan are from Takaman (?) where Leakhena's (finally learned how to spell her name) house is and they are some of the best longan I've had, despite their extremely large seeds. If it weren't for the size of the seed, the longan might be comparable to a lychee.


Fruit stall streetside

For dinner, Sokly and Darren (Sokly's best friend) took us to a Chinese place for some local Chinese food. I already wrote about the large population of Chinese here, so this was some pretty authentic stuff. I ordered "Black Chicken Soup" while the others had bitter-melon soup and duck soup. I figured the black chicken soup would be basic broth with pieces of chicken and veggies in it, or perhaps like congee porridge with chicken in it. When the food arrived to my great surprise I found a bowl of black soup with an ENTIRE CHICKEN in it. All they did was strip its feathers and plop it into a bowl of soup seasoned with various strange ingredients such as ginseng, longan, some fungus, roots, black lumpy things, livers, and pig intestines among other unidentifiable things. Luckily Ed ordered the same thing as I did, so we shared the experience of "Black Chicken Soup" together. Also, the chicken was ACTUALLY BLACK. Darren explained that the chicken is a particular type that is black, even the meat was black in some places.


Black Chicken Soup

As of now, we're planning the trip to Kep this weekend and I'm really excited!

Life in the House

Vann Molyvann's house from across Mao Tse Tung (?) Blvd

I've been so busy catching up on the Angkor excursion that I haven't had time to write about the past few days. We've been really busy at work surveying Vann Molyvann's house for the past four days because he and his family are leaving PP for Siem Reap this weekend. Today was our last day to survey the house and I mainly worked on the south elevation, north east elevation and site plan. Vann Molyvann (the architect whose works we're working to preserve) built his house with a hyperbolic roof inspired by vernacular Brazilian roofs. It's built on a square grid with the second and third levels pivoted 45 degrees so as to take advantage of the view outside from all four facades. His style of brickwork and exposed corners with horizontal lines reminds me of Frank Llyod Wright with a bit of Corbusier thrown in with the brise soleil that surround all four sides. Vann Molyvann still lives there with his wife, Trudy, and an army of Khmer helpers (a driver, cook, door man, and maybe more). We sat down and listened to Bill read an article about the house and VM's life. It's really amazing how he managed to escape from Cambodia with his whole family at the beginning of the Khmer Rouge.


The southern facade of VM's house

Life in the house at Street 228 has been fairly quiet. We got two new housemates after Yasemin left on Saturday: Kyle Brooks, a photographer from the states, and Stephen Chen, a Princeton-graduated film maker. Stephen is now my room mate and he has a lot of serious looking camera equipment. For the past two weeks we've also had a cook in the house named Rett. She comes on an irregular schedule that I haven't quite figured out yet and cooks meals that are consistently good, but tonight's was particularly exceptional. It consisted of sauteed green veggies, fried fish, some kind of chicken curry, and watermelon for dessert. All for the low price of $4/person/meal! As a side note, the fish I've had here has been pretty fresh and delicious because it mainly comes from the Tonle Sap lake or from the Mekong river. I'm not sure exactly what it looks like, but it tastes pretty good.



Rett at the stove!


Our delicious meal