...Bangkok (Three Days to Eat)

The reclining Buddha in Bangkok

 Day 1
'Where's the best place for Thai food?' we eagerly ask the owner of our guesthouse. We're staying 10 minutes away from the infamous Koh San road, famed for its 18 year-old gap yearers in branded beer vests (you drink cheap foreign beer, well done you) and banana pancakes. In that respect it doesn't disappoint. There's also a surprising amount of kebab stalls. I think we've eaten enough of those in the last 6 months. The owner twists his mouth in concentration. 'Somewhere round here?' he replies unconvincingly. We press him further,  'Where do Thai people eat round here?'. His mother is summoned and after a shriek of laughter responds with 'No Thai people eat round here!'

We've been in the country 4 hours and our one meal so far has been a disappointing Pad Thai, over-sweet and undercooked. And we're desperate. After initially allowing a week to eat the delicacies of Bangkok, we reduced it to two days as we realised we didn't actually want to spend any more time in this part of the world.  After traipsing along Koh San Road we find an alleyway with a cart serving locals up bowls of noodle soup and dumplings. It's good but we've been spoilt by the fresh noodles and dense flavours of China's superior version. Two meals down. Oh dear.

Day 2
After some research and a breakfast of sweet sticky rice and mango we head for an area where a food tour goes (at $33 dollars a head we decide to do it ourselves). On the way we get distracted by the stunning 46 metre long gold, reclining Buddha. We edge our way through markets, the air perfumed with lemon grass, galangal, garlic and lime. We stop and buy sweetcorn fritters from an old lady. The tasty fritters are dense with straight-off-the-cob corn and are smothered in sweet chilli sauce. Things look promising.

Sweetcorn fritters

We walk and walk but all we pass are noodle soup stalls. Eventually we stumble into China town and land in a smiley man's restaurant where we eat rice and pork, too tired to venture further. We catch a boat back and I eat a Magnum which is quite possibly the loveliest thing I've eaten in a long time. I feel no shame.  I haven't eaten decent chocolate since a French girl produced bars of Lindt in Kashgar.

A lunch stop in China Town

In the evening we head out to a restaurant nearby that seems to offer a different menu to all the other places. I eat a rich tomatoey curry with noodles and chicken on the bone. It is delicious and I feel victorious. Finn however, has ordered a green curry which he's disappointed with. He kills the dish with our ultimate put down: 'I could've made this at home'. I'm relieved he doesn't add the final blow of 'but I wouldn't bother'. Yes, we really do care that much about food.

Day 3
I have been in touch with some ex-students of mine from Bangkok and we arrange to meet. I'm excited about seeing them because a) they are absolutely lovely and b) we've asked them to take us somewhere amazing and cheap for dinner. But first we hit the market.

Chatuchak market is, by anyone's standards, utterly huge. After the excitement of buying a tiffin carrier that exactly matches my cream and green kitchen pans, I need to catch my breath before I cry in front of everyone at its shear beauty. Soon we are scooping creamy coconut ice cream and toasted peanuts from a coconut shell. Someone has even thoughtfully left some of the coconut meat in and once again, I have to hold back the tears.

Coconut ice cream

Back to the shopping and I start to notice Finn dragging his feet. He wants lunch. We head to an area of stalls selling the usual suspects but also lots of nice looking seafood dishes. Finn has fishcakes which I have a nibble on and agree they taste quite lovely and very lemongrassy. I opt for a man with a contraption that turns boiled potatoes into spirals which are then deep-fried in oil and then dusted with paprika. Et voila, crisps on a skewer. I'm delighted with my find.

A 'potato kebab'

In the evening Boss and Meow (so-called because he is the only boy in the family and she used to cry like a cat!) lead us back to Koh San Road. Finn and I share looks ranging between confusion, disappointment and fear. But we are wrong to judge. Meow confesses she doesn't like Thai food so Boss takes control and orders us a smorgasbord of loveliness. The restaurant is famous for Tom Yam Soup. A salty, seafood soup. I try a little without the offending articles and have to admit it is delicious.

Boss dishing up Tom Yam Soup

We also eat chicken cooked in bamboo which is juicy and tender and complimented by a soy and sesame dip.  We wrestle over the bill, they win but after a quick teacherly re-cap on the difference between desert and dessert (we never stop working!), we head to a street stall for the latter. We sit on plastic stools on the pavement with mango and sticky rice, red beans in coconut milk, dyed rice flour with crushed ice and coconut milk and durian with sweet rice. Durian is a fruit so offensively pungent that one of the rules at our hotel is that you are not allowed to eat it in your room. The taste is a little less offensive but there is something a bit 'rotting' about it. I win the fight over the bill and promise to return the favour of paying for a meal when they come to London again.

Meow, Boss and dessert

We end on our overland journey on a high thanks to Boss and Meow. From the first sandwich in Brussels to the last plate of sticky rice in Bangkok, eating has (generally) been a pleasure. But eating with old and new friends is really what it's been about. It's not over though. For tomorrow we fly to India, specifically Calcutta where 6 years ago I had one of the best meals of my life. Now I just need to remember where the restaurant was.

...Cambodia (The land of the Sweet-Toothed)

Shadow puppets in Phnom Penh

So onto Cambodian food. Something we've really noticed is how sweet the food is here. On a cookery course in the capital Phnom Penh, almost every savoury dish we made involved copious amounts of palm sugar. When mixed with water it takes on a treacly taste which in the chicken curry we made, was incredibly overpowering. Perhaps too overpowering. 

The curry paste for our Khmer chicken curry (fresh turmeric, ginger, lemon grass,garlic and shallots)

The result

The other source of sweetness comes from a surprising ingredient. Condensed milk. For the ignorant, this is sweetened cow's milk with the water removed, resulting in a creamy consistency. Two brands dominate the competitive market, My Boy and Best Cows. Just as funny if you swap the words (though My Cows would get my money every time). My own direct experience of the stuff up until now has been watching my dad pour it over his bowl of cornflakes and muesli before adding hot water. So you can understand why I steer clear of it. However, it is difficult to avoid here. A breakfast in the market consisted of cups of tapioca, under-ripe bananas, jelly sweets and a generous lash of the creamy stuff. I'm glad I tried it but shan't be repeating it again (though the fact I could eat jelly sweets for breakfast was very exciting and felt like eating chocolate biscuits from the posh tin for breakfast on Christmas day). 

A tapioca breakfast in a Phnom Penh market

The gelatinous 'sweets'

Where it is welcome is in cold coffee. If you order just a coffee here, it'll be cold (if you specifically ask for a hot coffee, it'll be tepid). We have likened it to an upside down Guinness as strong coffee and ice sit on a layer of condensed milk at the bottom, allowing you to stir in as much as you like.  Attempts at making cold, milky coffee at home have never quite hit the spot. Now we know the secret of a good one. I urge you to try it (make sure the coffee is really strong).  

Aside from sweet stuff, I have been taking every opportunity to eat lok lak. This heavenly dish consists of thin slices of beef in a light tomato sauce served with rice, salad and a fried egg. Yes, I agree it does sound like something you might concoct yourself when you can't be bothered to go to Sainsbury's. But the dish is really pulled together by the dip of soy sauce, fresh lime juice and black pepper. In one place they served it with crinkle-cut chips. I had it two nights in a row. You can take the girl out of England...

Lok Lak

On a completely different note, we wandered past a restaurant with a sign promising 'You'll leave wanting more'. Our appetites insatiable, we kept walking. Amazing how such a sentence can be misinterpreted.

...Cambodia (Dining Out)

An idol enjoying a 'full-English' in Phnom Penh. Half the people don't eat this well.

After an overlong bus journey, we arrived in Phnom Penh, Cambodia's capital. We hadn't eaten for 9 hours. A record!  We wandered down alleyways lined with security guards protecting the shiny 4X4s whose owners were karaoke-ing nearby. Eventually we came across a bustling Chinese restaurant (Cambodia has a large population of Chinese). The food wasn't interesting and not worth mentioning. The dining experience however, was.

First up is the 'beer lady'. This is something that popped up in Laos too. You order a beer in a restaurant and you get a 'beer lady', your own pretty lady dressed in an outfit that is of the same colours as the beer logo. Her sole reason for living is to keep your glass topped up. Now I have to say, I've never really had an issue with topping up my own glass. I'm not bragging here, I wouldn't say I'm amazing or anything but I've never found it to be a problem. A 'beer lady' brings a whole new angle to the experience. She waits out of sight and as soon as you've put your glass down she's there, topping you up. Before we knew it she'd swiftly opened a second bottle and deftly emptied half of it into our glasses. This put me on edge as I didn't want her to open the third bottle she'd snuck on the table (oh she's good! She knows what she's doing!) because quite frankly it tasted of wee. It didn't help that she kept putting massive ice cubes in our half pint glasses which watered down the offensive liquid even more than the manufacturers had clearly already done.

Next to us was a group of 8 middle-aged (i.e. old enough to know better) men having a boys' night out. They were clearly in the mood to flash their cash and sat drinking Beck's! The 'Becks ladies' were a classier breed than our lady and also kept the gents topped up with whiskey (is that classed as moonlighting?). The bottle said Johnnie Walker but it is entirely possible to 'hire' a bottle of a well-known spirit to make everyone think you can afford it while you drink the cheap and nasty stuff. I guess it would be like having a bottle of blue WKD on the table while you drink Fairy Liquid. Though you could argue the taste of the latter is preferable. After a while, the 'Beck's ladies' joined the gents, giggling at their jokes behind perfectly manicured fingernails. It is also possible to 'hire' yourself some female company. Nothing dodgy mind. There are plenty of massage parlours about for those kind of shenanigans should you so desire.

While all this was going on, beggars circled the tables. Men, women and children.  A young man waited outside and when a table emptied, would take his plastic bag and fill it with any leftovers. The amount of food wasted in that restaurant was shocking and it was refreshing to see it not being throw away (credit should go to the staff who didn't stop him). I was struck by how he did it with such dignity and without any shame. In just an hour, Cambodia was laid bare in front of us. And it was pretty ugly.