Travels with Hayley

Sitting by the pool by 6.45 this morning, watching a big family of Cambodian kids, Mum, Dad and Grandma all splashing about in their life jackets and having a whale of a time. Grandpa stayed away from the frolics and very seriously carried out his morning stretches and exercise regime watching from the side. The kids spoke a little English and we established they were on holiday from a neighbouring province and were extremely sad to be leaving today, hence the last chance, early morning swim.

After a while I went back to writing and let them carry on with their swimming, but the little boy was obviously keen to show off some more English phrases he knew so kept repeating ‘I’m getting out of here right now’ – in an American accent, of course. Next on the list of learned phrases, which he enunciated loudly enough to reach the back row of any London theatre – “What the fuck!”

I choked on my drink, Kerry forgot to keep swimming and sunk halfway to the bottom of the pool – but there was zero reaction from anyone in the family, so obviously that particular phrase in English wasn’t familiar to them! I’m not convinced he really knew what he was saying either, he was just repeating something he’d heard but he certainly got a reaction from us!

After they left I decided little could top that so decided to take myself out for a walk. This seems to be a town that specialises in tailoring, bling and motor vehicles. Everywhere you look there were shops selling shiny new mopeds, used car parts, tyres, engines, everything you can think of related to motor transport (I’d list more but I don’t know anymore names of things to do with cars 😂)

Wandering along, admiring all the shiny car things, I watched some monks slowly making their way up the street collecting alms. Now, we’ve been told repeatedly that they go to collect food for the day from the locals – but I watched these two at three separate places and no food was changing hands, they were collecting cold hard cash! Has anyone considered for a moment that a couple of wise guys might have picked up some charity shop monks robes (we know they go through a set a year if they’ve been good, the old ones must go somewhere…) and are running some kind of undercover protection racket?! Just a thought 😂

Meandering along taking pictures of all of the various unidentifiable foods out on offer for breakfast, a garlic warehouse, kids casually hanging out on the railway tracks and the wildly intriguingly named ‘Department of Cults and Religions’ (Are they pro or anti? What do they actually do? Just keep track of them, bit of administration, taxation? Are religions and cults treated the same – and who decides which is which? Is there a categorisation matrix or something? Too many questions…)

I walked back to the hotel via a tiny stall selling ice cream sandwiches so that was breakfast sorted! A long brioche bun with little scoops of vanilla ice cream, a drizzle of condensed milk and peanuts on top. Very nice although salted peanuts would have taken it to the next level, perhaps I’ll experiment at home.

On the bus and on today’s edition of Small Stories by Kom! We learned about Sampah – where you put your hands together in a prayer motion when you greet people. There are 5 different levels of this – hands below your chin for people younger than you, hands at your lips for elders, around the nose for royalty, between eyebrows for Buddhist monks and on your forehead for God. Turns out I’ve been wandering around Cambodia for 2 weeks assigning God status to everyone I’ve met – no wonder they’ve all been so friendly 😂

A long stretch in the bus and a stop for lunch but I wasn’t very hungry and the menu didn’t exactly tempt me – see pictures below – so I decided to go for a walk instead and sat at a roadside stall with a bottle of water. Thank goodness I didn’t eat there and just bought the water, see the feline intruder just wandering over the worktops…

Arriving to the hotel we dropped the bags off (disturbing a wedding photoshoot – apparently the wedding isn’t until January but it’s normal to have staged photos beforehand – I wonder if this explains the couple in the pet shop…) and headed straight out to the countryside. This province is famous for its pottery and we were off to visit some of the people making their living from the clay.

Kom told us the people at our first stop were very poor but very friendly. Talk about an understatement, she was delightful! She laughed and smiled and radiated joy the whole time we were there. She was widowed 50 years ago when her husband fell out of a tree and she was 4 months pregnant with their first child. She’s lived with her single sister and her daughter ever since, none of them have married/remarried. Now look, it’s a sad story but she was utterly joyous – could there be an argument to be made it’s because she hasn’t had to put up with men for 50 years? I don’t think we should rule it out 😂

The way they make the pottery is fascinating, I honestly wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it for myself. They don’t have a potters wheel, they have a piece of tree trunk about waist high that they put the clay on and then they walk around and around and around it, essentially making themselves the wheel. It’s incredible. Mum, I think Tim would be interested? I’ve attached a tiny video of it below. There’s a kiln in town where they all pay to have their creations fired (of course the whole town are potters and make almost identical things – if your neighbour does well, jump on the bandwagon is the Cambodian way!)

It’s always the women that do the pottery making, the men go to the local hills and scrape out the clay and bring it home for them. Because this lady has no husband she has to pay someone to get it for her so she makes less profit than the rest. Also, the local clay isn’t as good for all of the things she makes so sometimes she has to make an overnight trip to the next province to get a different clay. Such hard work.

She sells her pots and other creations to a middle man that comes through the village to collect them and takes them across the country, and also to any tourist groups that come through. By this point we were so enamoured by her that the vast majority of the group were falling over themselves to buy something. I got a beautiful little green glazed pot which I suspect might have been bought in actually, Kom says they buy in a few things just because the tourists like them – guilty! Not only did she charge a pittance for everything – prices from 1-4 USD, she also then insisted on giving the whole group a free little lidded clay pot, just for love ❤️ We left her smiling and waving, telling Kom to tell us she loves us, remember her! It was just all too lovely.

A stroll down the road, past a tamarind tree where we were taught you can eat the flowers and leaves as well as the fruit (there seems very little that Cambodians won’t give a go, food wise!), the demonstration of a palm tree ladder and onto the next pottery makers.

This seemed a more affluent place and was definetly set up with tourists in mind. We had another demo of pot making and were offered a go on the ‘walking wheel’. A no from me I’m afraid 1. I don’t do crafts. 2. I loathe the feeling of clay. 3. This is a nice manicure you know! 😂 Next up was dressing in traditional clothing – I passed again for the joy of watching the others and because I wanted a go on the local musical instruments. See video below – I might not be skilled (yet) but you can’t knock my enthusiasm!

Back to the city and we hit the night market. Our first stop was was for durian – this is known as the King of Fruits in Cambodia but it smells so bad that it’s banned in hotels and on public transport, there’s signs about it everywhere! It’s also very expensive compared to other fruits as it’s high maintenance to grow – frankly I’m not sure it’s got much going for it, it feels a bit like the Emperor’s new clothes!

So we got some to try, it doesn’t smell lovely but I don’t think it’s as terrible as people make out, maybe it gets worse the riper it gets. I didn’t like it much though, it’s got a kind of fleshy, creamy texture with a fruity taste coming in at the end. Glad I tried it but I won’t be troubling any hotels or public transportation carrying it around for impromptu snacking!

A quick stop to try barbecued stuffed frog – this is Kom’s explanation for how it’s made – prepare yourselves! First you cut the head off your frog ( how all good recipes start, surely…) Be careful as the body will still move and the eyes will still blink at you (😳) Then take out the frog’s guts but make sure you don’t cut his belly open. Chop up the bits with some pork mince, curry paste and peanuts and stuff if back into the belly and then grill. You can also do the same with toads but 3 different parts of the toad are poisonous so you have to be pretty careful!

If you can get over this explanation it actually tastes – alright. Frog itself is pretty boney but the stuffing was ok. Could have done with some salt – feel like that’s been a theme during the last couple of weeks 😂 Also available on the stall was bat but Kom passed on that – goodness knows what that is like then if it’s worse than dead blinky amphibian 😂

Passing through another part of the market there was loud music playing and a few of us started dancing – the local kids were shrieking with laughter at the mad white people – of course this egged us on and we started jumping around like loons, shaking our crazy thang 😂 The kids were running to get their friends to watch, it was so funny.

The town we were in has never really recovered from COVID, loads of the hotels have closed and the majority of the restaurants, in fact there was basically a choice of two. I feel like the market is there again for a third though as the one we went to was absolutely packed with locals and we had to wait a good while for a table – we got one eventually and I ordered some seafood noodles and a Coke (5.5 USD for the lot).

I walked down the alley at the side to go to the loo, past a small outside seating area where an older lady was sitting. She was so beautiful so I said hello in Cambodian and signed I’d like to take her photo. Well, the next ten minutes were both completely joyful and hilarious in equal measure.

She wouldn’t stop speaking to me in rapid Cambodian, pausing for me to answer and then carrying on regardless when I gave a bemused shrug! She was smiling and laughing away, hugging me, rubbing my arms and back and generally indicating for me not to leave. It transpired her grown up son and her young granddaughter were playing nearby and he’d throw out the occasional translation – she wishes you long and happy life, she loves you, she wants to live with you! She was adorable. We had a picture taken together, she sat posing with her hands on her knees so I did the same thing – she tutted loudly and grabbed my arm and put it around her 😍

After I while I managed to convey I really did need the bathroom so said my extensive goodbyes and off I went. This, however, was not the end 😂 As I came out out the loo she was right there waiting for me – her son gave a – slightly long suffering – look and says she wants you to go with her. Now she’d been making gestures a lot like she was washing up before and shaking her head, I got the impression that maybe it was her families restaurant (hence why she was just hanging out in the garden) and she used to work in the kitchen, but she was too old now. Turns out she was very keen for me to see the exact spot of her previous labours as she bodily steered me into kitchens and through to the washing up area – she was surprisingly strong – and chattered on excitedly. The staff looked completely bemused – as you would expect if a small blonde woman was manhandled into the middle of your workplace – but she was totally undeterred, tapping my phone to show me to take a picture of the kitchen and one of the staff members (granddaughter maybe…?) The whole thing was completely baffling and heartwarming in equal measure. After another dozen hugs and kisses I made it back to the table to recount the whole encounter to the rest of the group! David asked ‘do things like this happen to you a lot when you go away?’ and I had to admit they did a bit, which makes me extremely happy!!

Off to bed as we have a long 5 hour drive to Kampot tomorrow, updates to follow. I’ll leave you on today’s episode of ‘bizarre things I’ve seen today in Cambodia!’

Lots of love always Xx