Hot 'n' Cold

Oh Cambodia. If I wrote an ode to Cambodia it would probably start off by praising the joys of Siem Riep and the Angkor Wat, then the joys of Sihanoukville and some heavenly beaches (albeit with some dodgy dogs), and a more reserved line about Phnom Penh. The real lowpoints though would be the roads and the food. I tried, I really did. I ate quite a few Khmer dishes (read lots of) and I got excited about one. And it was a salad.

There’s nothing wrong with the food, it just doesn’t really do it for me. When a burger is the food highlight of your week, you know there is something not quite right. It was a heavyweight burger though, even by international standards. Extra bonus points came in the form of blue cheese. My dining partner was a little freaked out by the amount of enthusiasm I had for that blue cheese, I still maintain it was within the normal limits. Whatever.

And when your food doesn’t excite you, all kinds of bad things start to happen. I went on a date with a guy I’d met in a bar the night before in Siem Riep. The conversation had been amazing – zip, zap, boom – we never stopped talking all night. We talked about everything, I’m sure in our partially ginned minds we had put the world to rights, no subject was too large or too small for our beady-eyed attention.

I was so excited when I woke up, convinced this was going to be the date of a lifetime. But then, when the time actually came, with a plate of bland food in front of us, the conversation and our interest in one another died such a sad little death I was tempted to have a funeral for it. My seafood was rubbery and in a sauce that was a cross between a curry and a sweet and sour, but strangely lacking the merits of either. His was some kind of instant noodle confection, peppered with a few vegetables here and there for authenticity.

On a good note though, the salad incident took place in Phnom Penh and though it still sported instant noodles as one of the main ingredients, somehow it worked. It was a simple combination of shredded red cabbage (I TOLD you it was all about the cabbage, see previous post), white onions, instant noodles, lettuce leaves and chicken broiled and served with dried garlic and sweet chilli sauce. I think the chef probably just made it up, though it bore the name of Spicy Khmer Chicken Salad. Sounds rather dodgy but it was actually heaven. I’m looking forward to the day when we can be reunited in my kitchen.

Plus, what Cambodia lacked in food for the stomach, it more than made up for in food for the soul (retch but I had to use that phrase, just once). Here’s a selection of the shots I got while I was there... There are more on the camera that I haven’t uploaded yet so these will have to do.

Dickensian life - A tale of two days

That's me! (Courtesy of Antonie Robertson)

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. Never has a saying been truer than at this current moment in time. Yesterday was literally amazing – I was researching a feature for the magazine on rock climbing so spent a full day out in the open air, perched atop a big pile of rock testing my strength against its will.

The result? Probably about 7:3 to me – the seven because I kicked that mountain’s ass like you wouldn’t believe. The three to the mountain mainly because of the big bruise it left on my ass when I slipped and fell and collided with the rock, butt first. You win some, you lose some (I’m beginning to feel a cliché theme for this entry. How many more proverbs can I get in? Wait and see).

The remaining factor detracting from my 100 percent scorecard is the fact that after blithely climbing up and abseiling down the rockface a few times, I still whined like a baby as we set off the steep and very rocky descent back to terra firma. Surprising what the comfort of a rope will do to your mental state of mind no?



For those of you that think of Dubai solely in terms of a playboy’s fairground, filled with obscenely expensive hotels, restaurants and bars, I suggest you make the effort to get out of the city and head off into the sunset to live happily ever after. It's nice spending a weekend layover in Dubai, but if you spend a bit more time you can really get out of the city and into the desert.

There are things to do that don’t involve drinking or eating (though I’m loathe to count these out completely, this being a food blog n’ all). Scrambling up some mountains for example.

Anyway, as you can imagine, after a day’s worth of baking in the sun, clinging to a rock like a limpet, not forgetting posing for the photographer like a very sweaty and grumpy supermodel and using muscles I never even knew I had (ok ok, but that was a cliché too good to miss), I was fairly famished by the time we got back into the car. The prospect of the hour-long drive back to the city with my stomach growling, murmuring, bubbling and sometimes shouting with hunger was not very appealing, so Tonie and I decided to stop off along the way and pick up some chow.

The chosen place – a little road-side drive-by eatery in Al Madam (I kid you not, that’s the town’s name). Considering that I’ve been turning down invitations to the top restaurants in the city in an effort to stop eating out, I wasn’t overly enthused about the idea of a greasy spoon. Even less so a drive-by one, which is only marginally less offensive than a drive-by shooting, that other reviled practice.

What a mistake. The friendly guy spooning the grease showed me what a snob I’ve been. He greeted us with a welcome that would have put most other restaurants to shame. In less than five minutes after we’d rolled up, he’d whipped up a burger of chicken coated in delicately-spiced breadcrumbs and topped with some kind of spicy mayo and encased in soft, steaming bread. It was like how KFC should be, the KFC of the adverts, juicy chicken, crisp coating and mounds of crunchy lettuce. I’m not a fast food person, but Al Madam burger joint has been jotted down on the list of exceptions.

The burger of magnificence was washed down by a vat of mango juice. It. Tasted. Of. Real. Mango. This is something you don’t take for granted. A juice actually tasting of the fruit is supposedly came from? Revolutionary. It was slightly sweet, thick enough that you’ll keep your facial muscles in good shape sucking it up a straw but not so much so that there were huge chunks of mango in it (this happened to me the other day, I had to throw it away, it reminded me of vomit).

The only failing was the chips, which were crunchy but cold (unforgiveable) and so stiff they’d show rigor mortis a thing or two. I chucked them in the bin and blithely forgot about them while chowing down on my burger.

Over all too soon, we were soon winding our way back to Dubai where I saw Spyro Gyra play as part of the jazz festival. After thirty years, those guys still know how to put on a show and jam the house to its feet.

And then it was today. I woke up and had been bitten all over my face. My taxi didn’t turn up. I missed a John Legend press conference that I’d been looking forward to for months. I’ve got articles to write and no time to write them. Life’s busily trying to restore the equilibrium of yesterday’s high with a new low. But you know what? I’ll always have Al Madam’s greasy spoon. And that’s something.