Siem Reap

Siem Reap, in my eyes is worlds better that Phnom Penh. It seems a lot more developed and busy. We stayed at Tropical Breeze Guesthouse, which is a 5 minute walk to Pub Street. Pub Street is the backpacker's strip and also the location of the night market and some of Lonely Planet's recommended restaurants and bars. 

We arrived late afternoon and went to explore before deciding our plans for the next few days. After a shower, we headed out for dinner and bumped into two girls we met on the Halong Bay tour. We ended up going to dinner with them at Le Tigre de Papier, where we had some traditional Cambodian food. We then headed to Angkor What?, a bar next door which is well known on the backpacker circuit for the t-shirts which you get when you buy a certain amount of drinks. 

This was our first late night in a while and we only got back to the guesthouse past 2am. 

The next morning we had an earlyish start, as we went back to Le Tigre de Papier for a Cambodian cooking class. 

The class started with us picking a starter and a main course from the menu, the teacher then took us to the food market. We saw so many different fruits and meats. The meats and fishes were not the nicest things to see all bloods and guts. She explained to us the ingredients that we would be using in some of our meals. 

On the return from the market, we all had plates with the ingredients that were in our starters and our teacher explained what they were and showed us how to cut and peel everything.

After this was complete, we headed to the kitchen to heat us sauces and complete our starters. In between this we also prepared all the ingredients for the main. The majority of the dishes had the same ingredients such as; pepper, chicken stock, brown sugar, garlic and oyster sauce. 

As we left things to simmer our teacher showed us how to make some of the veg into flowers, birds and other fun shapes. We also all used banana leaves as the first layer of our food and made then into a flower shape.

 

Our teacher absolutely loved Nath and couldn't stop giggling around him which also meant that he did a lot of cooking.

So anyway, here are the pictures of the end result.

My starter - Spicy Papaya Salad 

Nath's starter - Fresh chicken spring rolls with a sweet chilli and peanut sauce

Unfortunately I didn't take a picture of my main, but here is Nath's and his was beef Loc Lak.

And finally our dessert was a mixture of lychee type fruits, sticky rice (which was not to my taste) and mango. 

And at the end we received a certificate.

Day 3 in Siem Reap deserves a post of its own so hope you enjoy it.