Toerke

We want to visit Battambang’s countryside. Because foreigners are not allowed to rent motorcycles, we let ourselves be chauffeured. Dusty roads zigzag through a system of small irrigation canals passing rice paddies, mango plantations, banana trees, coconut palm trees and kampot. Some rice fields are harvested three times a year thanks to the dam at Kamping Puoy that provides water. The dam is useful now, but no less than 10,000 starved and abused workers lost their lives building it under the Khmer Rouge. Today it is a place of beauty, a wonderful lake on which you can row idyllically among thousands of lotus flowers and fishing boats. A remainder of the French presence here is the bamboo train or norry. To transport wood, rice and passengers between the villages and to Battambang, they put wheels on the tracks and a platform of bamboo sticks on the wheels. The construction is powered by a would-be lawnmower. At Wat Banan we get a taste of the Angkor temples. Five years from now, down by a massive rock wall, where an impressive bamboo scaffolding surrounds the rock, there will be a 112m rock carving about the life of the buddha. It is a project by Morodaki Angkor to learn the poor a trade and to give them hope for a better future. After five months without a pot and pan, I can do my thing in the kitchen. The Smokin’ Pot restaurant in Battambang organizes ac coocking course. First we go to the market where we carefully pick our ingredients among the many strange food(?) supplies – turtles, stinky fish paste. After a morning of wokking I can make three dishes: the Cambodian amok (coconut scurry) and lok lak (beef cubes with egg) and the Thai tom yam (hot soup). Mmmm. No doubt that you will spot me, recipe book in hand, in the isles of the Sino-Antwerp Sun Wah in a few months time.