Urban architecture in Phnom Penh

Phnom Penh has an urban landscape similar to many other SE Asian cities, with French influences, densely packed apartment buildings with shops on the ground floor, few sidewalks.  On the other hand, it has a lot of unique character, with many modern buildings from the 60s in particular.

A group called Khmer Architecture Tours offers tours around Phnom Penh, which would be cool to do in every city!  Unfortunately, they didn't offer any tours when we were there, so we printed out their walking map of central Phnom Penh and followed it.

I'd recommend spending half a day doing it - doing an architecture walking tour makes you look up at the buildings, rather than just looking downwards watching for puddles and other things you don't want to step in.

We ended the tour at the magnificent Art Deco Central Market, since the rest of the tour looked pretty similar to what we had seen, but more importantly it looked like it was going to rain and we were tired!

Beyond just the architecturally significant points on the walking tour, Phnom Penh's urban landscape is pretty fun to look at.  Love all of the roof gardens!

The old airport structures are also good examples of 60s modernism, in a Khmer context.

I also loved these guard houses.  Looks like someone folded up a sheet of concrete and plopped it by the entrance.

Japanese?

Throughout Laos and Cambodia, a lot of people asked where we're from.  Once we got to the part where we said we're from California, a lot of people then proceeded to talk about how a lot of people from their country are now living in California.  Often, though, there would be major hangups about being Chinese-American.

***

"Hello, where are you from?  Are you from Malaysia?"

"No, America"

"But originally, where are you from?  Japan? Korea?"

"We're Chinese"

"But you look Japanese!"

***

"Where are you from?"

"America"

"But you are originally from..."

"We're Chinese"

"CHINESE?!" (deep furrowed eyebrows) "But you look Japanese!"

Best of Siem Reap Eats: three letter acronyms

There are only three letters you need to remember for eating in Siem Reap: K, F, and C.

As readers of this blog may know, food (both making and consuming) is one of my passions, but Siem Reap eating was a bit of a let down.  The tourists restaurants around the temples were predictably unexciting, had small portion sizes, and were expensive.  But eating noodle soup at various local restaurants ranging from $1.50-$4 was also disappointing, ranging from instant ramen with stir fried vegetables on top (actually the best tasting of the bunch) to rice noodles with pig intestines and kidney.  Even steamed buns from roadside carts were practically inedible.  The culprit for much of my poor eating experiences was a sweetness that seems to dominate a lot of Khmer cuisine, at least the cuisine which was within reach in Siem Reap.  Sweetness in savory food is just not my thing.

So there were really only two meals that I truly enjoyed in Siem Reap.  One of them is at FCC Angkor, one of the FCC (Foreign Correspondents Club) family of restaurants.  Housed in the old French Governor's mansion, it's a sight in itself.

Here, I tried the lotus root salad, which was absolutely surprising.  The thin white tubes that look like penne are actually the thinnest, most tender lotus roots I've ever seen or imagined!  With bacon, tiny shrimp, and chicken, it was refreshing and just right for the hot and humid weather. 

The only other meal I enjoyed was at none other than KFC, across from the luxurious Hotel de la Paix. Not surprisingly, the clientele included both locals and Europeans, but interestingly 1/3 of the customers on both (!) days we went were Chinese and Chinese-American!  So it wasn't just me who wasn't in the mood for more Khmer food.



















We had the 1-year of KFC in Cambodia anniversary special.  For $2.50, the meal deal included a piece of white meat, a piece of dark, plain rice, gravy, the best soup I'd had in Cambodia so far (it actually tasted natural), and a soft drink. The green beverage you see is Mirinda, a Pepsi brand.  I'd had Mirinda in China before, but I remembered that to be a lemon lime flavor.  Here, it's "green cream," like a cream soda.

So there you go, best of Siem Reap eats: FCC and KFC.

Apsara stone carvings

One of my favorite things at the temples around Siem Reap were the wall carvings. At Angkor Wat, for example, there were the female dancers, apsara, all around the temple. Each with unique hairstyle, pose, and clothes. Here are some of my favorites.

These two have quite a load on their heads!



















One of the rare ones smiling with teeth. Our guide said (perhaps his interpretation, but I like it), that women of the time shouldn't have smiled with their teeth showing otherwise she would not be a gentle lady. But the sculptors carved these on the outside of the wall where the king wouldn't be passing by.



















I like the hairdo of the apsara in the middle. The ends of her hair just stick straight up in the middle.



















An apsara that's not wearing a skirt, only underwear. She has a really modern shoulder-length haircut.

Splayed teeth stone carvings

The other stone carvings which I really enjoyed were representations of animals with splayed teeth.  Yes, I think they're cute.

From Angkor Wat, here's a couple pictures from the epic tale of monkey warriors fighting the demons.  Their only weapons were their teeth.

A griffin, above a garuda, at Banteay Srei.

Also at Banteay Srei, the half-man-half-lion incarnate of Vishnu killing Hiranyakashipu.  You can read about the story here. 

Trip Report: VTE-PKZ-REP

Continuing our journey from Vientiane, Laos to Siem Reap, Cambodia, we took Lao Airlines once again.  VTE-REP includes a stopover in Pakse, Laos (PKZ), but it seemed like 99% of passengers were continuing all the way to REP, with maybe only a couple passengers getting on in the southern Lao city.

Unlike our LPQ-VTE flight on the Chinese MA60, this flight was operated by the French-Italian ATR72.  I'd flown the ATR72 a lot in Western China and Myanmar, but somehow I don't remember that those airplanes lacked the window shades like this one, which is a bit uncomfortable when you've gotten up at 3:30am for the 6:30am departure, and the sun is in your eyes...

On the 1 hour 15 min VTE-PKZ segment, we were served a raisin brioche muffin and a choice of water, coffee or tea.  You can see that Lao Airlines's ATR72s also has the superbright upholstery as the MA60s.

In PKZ, we had to get off the airplane in order to go through Lao immigration.  An immigration officer checks your passport in VTE, but I guess that is more of a "double check" that you have a passport.  The actual station where you get your departure stamp is in PKZ.  We were the only flight at the airport, so basically the entire airplane got off, got these laminated boarding cards, lined up at immigration, and went to the boarding lounge (there's only one gate at PKZ).

Though the PKZ-REP segment was 15 minutes shorter than VTE-PKZ, I guess since this was an international flight the provisions were upgraded!  We were served a boxed meal with tuna fish salad sandwich (crusts cut off), apple slices, a sponge cake, plus a broader choice of beverages.

Baguette sandwich, Lao-style

A big fan of Vietnamese bahn mi, I was super excited to try the baguette sandwiches of Laos.  There are some interesting ingredients in it, in particular pork floss, or rou song in Chinese.  I think of rou song as a condiment for rice porridge, so when I see it "out of context," e.g. baked inside of a bun in a Hong Kong bakery, or in these sandwiches, I'm intrigued!

At our sandwich maker's stall in the food court of Talat Sao Mall in Vientiane, our sandwich started out sliced open, then filled with mayonnaise and pate spread.  I'd read that Lao-style sandwiches have a pate that's actually more like luncheon meat, but we definitely had pate that's French or Vietnamese style.  Then the bread was placed on a grill.

While the nascent sandwich was toasting away, our sandwich maker prepared the other ingredients.  This included slicing up the luncheon-meat ingredient, which comes from the large rolls wrapped in banana leaf you see in front.  Other ingredients were pork rimmed with red dye (did not taste like Chinese cha shao if you're wondering), and julienned vegetables.  These weren't pickled, like banh mi vegetables often are.  You can also see the brown rou song in the bowl in the middle.

The final product.  A toasty, tasty snacky food that powered a half day more of sightseeing!

Dining out in Vientiane

I liked Luang Prabang a lot since it was fun biking around town, going to the market for tropical fruits, and just relaxing, but in restaurants my taste buds fell fast asleep. I think since the tourist to local ratio is like 9:1, many restaurants serve food that's under-spiced and overall quite dull.

The eating scene in Vientiane is much better. Tourists are fewer here, and while there are a lot of foreigners still, a lot of them are in the diplomatic or NGO community who have money to spend and are potential repeat customers. Vientiane is also the commercial center for Laos, and locals here seem to be better off. So the general rule played out: fewer tourists + more disposable income = good food.

The first night we were in town, our hotel staff recommended Kua Lao, just around the corner. I hadn't heard of this before from the guidebook or other sources, and first impressions weren't great since we practically had to rouse the staff from watching TV to be seated and get a menu. We chose the tasting menu, which at 150,000 Lao kip ($18) is the second most expensive meal on my trip so far (the most expensive being Brasil a Gosto in Sao Paulo). There was grilled chicken, duck larb, sour fish soup, eggplant dip; in total 9 dishes and then fresh fruit. Later, I read this former expat's blog post about eating in Vientiane, Kua Lao was called "the fanciest and best Lao food in town." Indeed, there were a lot of locals there for some special occasion party. A great first meal in a new city.














The next night, we ventured by tuk tuk east of the tourist center to Bounmala restaurant (you can find it on tourist maps). I had learned about this restaurant from a blog I follow about eating in San Diego. Entering the restaurant, the first thought in my mind was, "these plastic chairs need some good Mr. Clean Magic Eraser action." But that's often a sign of a good local restaurant! Here, we tried the roast pork, bamboo shoot soup, and I think my favorite dish of all of the restaurants in Vientiane, the bindweed salad. It's like the salad we made in the Luang Prabang cooking class, but the dressing was more sour, the vegetables had varying textures and crunch, and it was served with preserved egg, which I believe is more traditional and definitely tastier than the hard boiled egg we put in our salad.














The following day, we went to try Restaurant Na Dao, which was recommended as the best French food in town by a few different sources. Adjacent to the Patuxay monument on the west side, there's barely any sign that there's a restaurant here. But seeing what looked like the French Ambassador's car parked outside, with the driver waiting patiently inside, I felt pretty good that we were in the right place!
















Na Dao offers a very nice 3 course set menu with a couple appetizer options, a couple main course options, fruit for dessert, and tea and coffee, for 72,000 kip or $8.60. The food was tasty if not particularly exciting, but there was gracious service, and it was fun to hang out with some distinguished, diplomatic looking foreigners.














Our final dinner in Vientiane was at Khop Chai Deu, a place popular among expats but also drawing a good number of locals the night we were there. The food here tasted pretty safe and not all that great, so I'd give this a pass if I come back to Vientiane.

Trip Report: LPQ-VTE

I was pretty excited about this flight, because it would be my first time flying Lao Airlines (QV). I had purchased a Bangkok Airways Discovery Airpass from Luang Prabang (LPQ) to Vientiane (VTE), from VTE to Siem Reap (REP) via Pakse (PKZ), REP to Phnom Penh (PNH), and PNH to BKK. QV would be operating the first two flights.

I was anticipating flying the French-Italian ATR72, since I'd read somewhere that these planes operate the routes that tourists are most likely to fly, like the international routes and LPQ-VTE. When it appeared that we'd be boarding the Chinese MA60 (MA stands for "Modern Ark" or 新舟, very Chinese...), I was even more excited, or was it anxious? According to Wikipedia, the other airlines that have this airplane include Air Congo International and Zest Airways of the Philippines, among other third world countries.














Besides overhead bin doors that hit you on the head when they're open, this turned out to be a perfectly "normal" plane (unlike the one propeller plane I flew on Sichuan Airlines in the early 90s, where the seats folded forward). Lao Airlines certainly wins the airline for "most technicolor interior decor."



















As is standard on many airlines outside of the US, there was a snack served on the 40 minute flight. Probably the most unique airline snack I've ever had! It was two dried bananas, identical in size, wrapped up in plastic. Think Biscoff cookies size-wise, only soft and banana flavor!

Sign Language: Laos

Someone put in a lot of effort into the pedestrian crossing signs in Laos. In Vientiane, the crosswalk signs feature a pretty life-like male silhouette wearing a suit. No generic stick figure here.














In the same city, there's also a crosswalk sign for giants. He has to lean forward slightly to fit in the triangle.














But the best is in Luang Prabang, where only a woman worthy of the World Heritage City gets to cross the street.

Back to School: Cooking Class in Luang Prabang

There are a few restaurants in Luang Prabang that offer cooking classes, and I just signed up for the one at Tamnak Lao.

The format is that you start out making Luang Prabang salad (what makes it special is a mayonnaise made with hard-boiled egg yolks), and a stir-fried noodle dish, and then you have both for lunch. Then you see a demonstration of chicken larb, an egg and pork stew, and stir-fried vermicelli noodles. You choose two to make. Then you see a demonstration of a red eggplant curry and an eggplant and pork stir-fry, and choose one to make. Then you eat the three dishes you made as an early dinner.














A couple highlights included the first stir-fried noodle dish, Feu Khua, since it was surprising how the noodles were actually first made into a pancake with egg, then cut up into pieces (amuzing in its semi-redundancy!). The other highlight was trying a totally new fruit, the sapodilla (aka chikoo).  Very sweet, with a texture a bit like guava.

But overall, I thought that the class could have been improved in a lot of ways. The biggest one is that the dishes were really toned down for Westerners. For example, we used regular garlic vs. the smaller Thai/Laos garlic, they left out the buffalo skin in the chili paste (jeowbong), and we left out the Paedak (pickled fish) in the Oh Paedak egg and pork stew (the ingredient is even in the name of the dish!). As a result, half of the dishes were very similar to Chinese dishes that I've had or made myself, and the other half were very similar to Thai dishes. Completely the opposite effect of what the class is supposed to impart, that Laos is its own unique cuisine.

The second one is the variety of dishes we prepared. It seemed like lot of the dishes were stir-fried, whereas already in the week I'd been in Laos it's clear that deep frying and steaming are other main ways of preparing food.

Third, our teacher just wasn't very engaging. After the demostration, we went to our stations (shared with one other student so you divide and conquer), and were left to our own devices while the teacher prepared for the next demonstration or cleaned up.

Finally, at $30 this was actually more expensive than the excellent Baan Thai in Chiang Mai, or the class at Tamarind a few blocks away, which based on the reviews I read after the fact (like this write-up in Gourmet), might be better at showing the diversity and uniqueness of Lao food.  I certainly can't vouch for it since I didn't experience it, but I'd want to give it a shot if I come back.

Stylin' Lanten

The most stylish villagers I came across in my tour of northern Laos, even more than the hipster Tai Dam and the amuzing Yao women with their pink yarn boas, were the Lanten. They wore very understated, dark indigo-dyed clothes. Women wore shirts that reminded me of flapper dresses, reaching down past the waist and buttoned up the side. Every woman we saw also wore a necklace that looks like it was made of a group of thin yarn bound together. The men seem to also wear a simple shirt, buttoned up the sides with silver buttons. Interestingly, the villagers' demeanors also matched their elegant dress; welcoming, but also calm and quiet.

Tai Dam Hipster!

The asymmetrical hair, the huge plastic-rimmed glasses, the plaid shirt - I feel like this lady would fit in well in Williamsburg!

P.S. We met her in a village just outside of Luang Namtha, where for the first time I saw low-volume silk worm cultivation that wasn't just set up for tourists.  The top knot is a traditional hair style for Tai Dam married women... the rest is personal hipster taste.