A question of great importance has been weighing on my mind lately. You know those type of questions? The ones we all have to face at some time or another in our lives. Questions of existence. Questions with different answers for different people in different times. Questions debated fiercely. The question bothering me lately is such a question:
What shall I have for dinner tonight?
In Ratanakiri, Cambodia this is a difficult question to answer. I have already eaten in every restaurant, that is to say both of them, many times over. Recently I have come across what resembles a take-away bar. There is a bench where you sit and place your order, and behind the meal is prepared in front of your eyes on a wood fire. The wood fire is a newly discovered cooking method used in fancy cafes to make gourmet pizzas, so these guys are certainly up with the play. They have a delicacy called “poan-tear-goan” but I call it “hard boiled egg of semi developed duck embryo with crunchy body parts”. Gulp.
Christmas provided the perfect opportunity to answer the above important dining question with “2 pigs”. It takes about 5 hours to cook 2 pigs above a pit of burning coal. It takes about 2 days for 30 people to eat them. It was a lot of bacon.
On New Year’s Eve I attended my first Khmer wedding reception. Anyone who was someone turned up, stayed long enough to eat the food and then shot off. Anyone who was drunk stayed and danced. It was quite surprising to see most people only stay 1 or 2 hours before going home. The reception started about 6pm and most people left by 8pm. Maybe, like me, they didn’t actually know the bride or groom. Still it pays to be at these things to mix-n-mingle, or if you are a small Khmer child, to collect empty beer cans. 4 cans can be sold for 100riel ($US0.025).
In Khmer there is a word “darleng” which might mean going for a walk, a trip, a mission, a journey or all of the above. I try to go “darleng” in the weekends because Ban Lung is a pretty small place. Last weekend I went for a darleng which took me down National Dirt Road 19, through a rubber tree plantation, into the forest, along tree felled hillsides. Stop. Time for a rest and a sugar cane juice drink. Over rivers, through small villages, past small children waving and shouting “Bye-bye” to a very nice waterfall. Here we did what any self-respecting gourmet pizza chef would do and set about making a small wood-fire. We cooked rice and meat, which along with an philanthropic dose of MSG made a very nice meal in a very pleasant place.
So it’s now 2004 eh? I am going to stay in Cambodia a little longer, so now is the time to book your flights! Offer lasts only as long as my contract and more to the point my sanity – currently measured as being 6 more months in Cambodia. Current plans are to finish up here in July 2004.
Hope you have a pleasant 2004 and good luck with any difficult dining questions it may bring 
