Mostly food, Kompong Thom and Kampong Cham

It's safe to say I'm in culinary heaven.  Let's start with fluids.

If anyone ever tells you they're going to open a western juice franchise like a Jugo Juice here, don't invest.  The availability of any tropical fruit freshly mashed, blended, pulped or otherwise into a glass in combination with any other beats home or synthetic drinks any day.  I started with ripened mango blended with fresh squeezed lime and sea salt.  Next was dragon fruit, coconut milk and pineapple.  Lychee, mangosteen, rambatan? (red and spikey on the outside), grass jelly, many melons, tamarind, sour sop, papaya, bird's nest white fungus drink (actually good) and mini banana.  My other possible favourite is soya bean drink.  The other ones I haven't seen their shell/natural shape, and have no clue what the attempt to a foreign translation meant.  But they're good!

We've been carrying water bottles, but roadside stands also have coconuts that a 90lb woman will hack into with a big knife and hand you a straw.  Perfecto! 

The other magic dirt road side drink is fresh sugar cane juice.  From the woman machete-ing the sugar cane, to running it through a roller wheel press, to in your glass is about a 2 minute process if she wrings it out really well.  A glass of it on ice costs about 7.5 cents (all these places have ice as guys on motos have ice routes where they drop by each day and saw off a chunk for people).  Its not as sweet as the name might imply, and is a good cycling drink.

I haven't had any local money really yet, but US$1 bills are pretty much gold.  Carrying local money gets you really cheap stuff at the stands, but our guy with us has that.  Apparently a normal coconut deal is the're about 2,000 reals (exchange is 4,000:1) or 50 cents, but I can't drink two, and when I'm thirsty and can chug back a coconut or fork over a paltry George Washington, I'm going for the latter.  Having said that, I'm officially going to start a petition that George Washington only be on the one dollar bill domestically.  Internationally it should bear a can of Coca Cola.  I haven't had a can yet as I'm trying to OD on tropical fruit, but thus far in life it's become clear to me that most second and third world countries start their economies by the simple understanding that white people in hot climates know a Coca Cola is worth handing over a dollar for, even if it could/should be cheaper. 

Past fluids to cycling foods... other roadside cycling foods include power bars (mini corn on cobb), and power gels (rice, cane syrup and bean mashed into a gooey white paste and wrapped in a skillfully folded banana leaf).  About 7.5 cents and 5 cents equivalent, respectively.  I'm particularly fond of the doughy gooey sweet white paste power gels.  Both go in a jersey pocket cleanly in their own wrapper and are smartly designed to be eco-friendly yet litter-able.  Ingenious how they thought ahead for biking!

For lunch we had make your own sandwiches, what we'd call Vietnamese sandwiches at home.  Carrot, cucumber, pork or tuna today, lettuce, green tomato, baguette, La Vache cheese and sweet hot sauce and/or dijon (French colonized here too, just not up till the 50's like Vietnam).  Good stuff.  Local peanut butter, peanut brittle, and a fruit plate the likes of which can't be assembled in Canada.

The most interesting thing about lunch was the setting.  "Convenience store" which a stilted building over rice paddies.  Johnny Walker gasoline specials out front.  A table and stools consisting of $2,000 of solid teak... or just the junk from cutting up the jungle right here.  And a family of ducks and chicks, chickens and chicks, cat, dog, etc.  The live chicken trade is alive and well, a little twine to tie feet, a moto stop, and a lot of feathers as the guy departed with the chicken flopping upside down...

Some of the villages we went through looked pretty basic on first glance, but as we sat there for 3 mins to drink water it'd all make sense.  One lady had a sewing machine in the front of the hut.  One guy cut hair on a chair in the open with a hanging mirror.  Petrol and food were there.  The well.  The school.  The ingredients for the daily routine.

The kids today were fun, they all know hello, goodbye, and other random bits.  I find Tori to be pretty funny, but they really think she's funny.  Little kids laughing in glee is always good too.  The ladies at the stands like her teeth and tell Phea to tell her they think she's beautiful.

Our dinners are full of flavour.  Rice, chicken, fish, beef, egg and pork, with any combo of chilis, garlic, ginger, and a million other spices.  All normal western veggies are used.  Things taste very full of flavour, very unprocessed.  Speaking of full of flavour, chilis mean serious business here... Phea and I were sweating away at dinner last night and he said he felt like his eyeballs were on fire, which pretty much captured it.  I had two days of sore throat, one in Singapore and one here, plus congestion.  The runny nose is inconsequential, I feel fine, and was glad the sore throat quickly abated.  But to kick the runny nose I'm using full scale assault of citrus fresh squeezed fruit juices (yesterday was 50/50 lime and orange, with salt) and chili peppers (yes, they're red hot).  I love my flavours!

Tori didn't specify accomodation level, but we're on something like $20 hotel rooms and $10 dinners, or $15 per person per day, which is basically the ritzy of the ritz.  In Siem Reap which caters to international tourists more because of the temples our French hotel built on water/stilts in the middle of town was more, but in the grand scheme not something I'm going to worry about.  I'm only taking a few blackberry pictures, especially during the day.  Tori carries her big SLR camera and I have a little Panasonic with a wide-ish angle lens and a sturdy case that goes on the belt of my shorts so I can do quick ones from bike or otherwise, a blackberry holster clip makes no sense... but some today are  of our breakfast in Kompong Trom, and our room overlooking the Mekong river and one off the balcony in Kompong Cham.  The wood carved bed and furniture are awesome.

Any room has bugs, couldn't get rid of them if you tried, and I wouldn't want to be near the amount of poison from trying.  People here touch bugs like we touch cats and dogs, that "icky" feeling doesn't seem to be part of the bug/human relationship.  Crickets are harmless, geckos in rooms are good anyway, spiders in the corner sitting in a web don't bother me.  Mosquitos and flies are the only annoyance, but that doesn't really go to hotel rooms.  Cockroaches just go hide in loose tiles in the floor or something anyway, I smack them if I see them, but they don't seem that bothersome, other than their role of spreading grime in the world.  When you smush them, these tiny ants find them, and 3 hours later the carcass is totally gone like nothing even happened there.  Pretty amazing actually.