Cambodian food: The good, the bad, and the ugly.

I haven’t had the best experience with Cambodian food; surprisingly it’s been my biggest struggle since arriving - and that’s not just because our host home food has made me sick for over 2 weeks now. Today, I haven’t stopped staring at the pictures of my last meal In England... bacon cheese burger, spicy wedges, cheesy garlic bread and strawberries with eton mess Ice cream; all cooked by mum.

Back to the plain stuff.

At the guest house, this was the average breakfast, which wasn’t too bad. Pineapple, veggie omelette and lots of pork. I didn’t enjoy this too much whilst having it, but if I could have it now I would be over the moon. The Good.

This is the average breakfast at the host home. This is usually served with pork or beef but I have since gone veggie with the host homes food, as the meat is really unsanitary. Omlette with rice (You’ll be seeing egg and rice a lot in this blog), served with vegetables and a veggie soup (which is incredible).

The Good.

One of my favourite meals here has been cooked by the Khmer volunteers. The cooked egg, noodles, fried vegetables and cut up some watermelon. Bare in mind, I’m starting off easy here. The Good.

After a while, it seemed like our host Mum was getting quite bored in cooking us food. She started just putting fried veg and plain, sticky rice in a bowl. It was nice for one night, but the meals kept getting more plain. The Bad.

As I told you, my meals from Monday-Friday last week just consisted of rice and bean sprouts.... I’m so sick of rice and bean sprouts. The Bad.

So, these are the bad’s, what are the uglies like?

Baby duck. Yes. Baby duck. I didn’t try this as I couldn’t bring myself to eat a duck foetus!

However, Robyn and Ed did! Ed described it as tasting “just like a boiled egg” - however I don’t fully believe that one! Robyn described the foetus as “mushy and minging“ which I do believe!

The Ugly

Obviously another ugly, is the entire chicken I bought in the guest house!

The Ugly

Although these looked tasty, and did taste nice for a while... I felt like I was instantly going to throw up with the disgusting cheese that came out of the sausages and when I found out that meatballs were crushed up fish. I needed a lie down. The Bad

Egg toasties! A funny combination with the sweet chilli sauce and cooked lettuce but it surprisingly tasted brilliant. However, for some reason, Wills host mum decided that she wasn’t going to cook them again... it’s just a distant memory now. The Good

These were told to us as “Cambodian, Veggie spring rolls”. Therefore, Rachel (who’s a veggie) ate them too. They were OK but the texture was a little too weird for me. In the end, we found out that they were not veggie. Therefore, I’ll have to give this a: The Bad

One time, our host Mum had asked us what we wanted for lunch, after a lot of miss communication and the findings of a ketchup bottle, we received omelette and fried egg sandwiches. These were the closest tasting thing, to England. However, after we replied “Chiiangg“ (tasty), she made us egg sandwiches for breakfast, lunch AND dinner for about 2 days until we were sick of egg. She also over charged us for them by loads. The bad (now)

If you’re reading my blog, and wondering “how is the hygiene that bad“. This is a picture of limes before they were served to us to eat! The Ugly

After some more communication, we asked for Khmer noodles which we thought would be the closest thing to pasta. They’re delicious, although we‘ve now had them for 3 nights in a row... I wonder if they will be dinner for the rest of the week. We had them last night, but we didn’t get back from the clinic until 8.30/9pm. This is where the hygeine gets bad for us, as our food is left out to go cold, in the open with rats and bugs running around the place. We didn't eat it last night - or the night she left lunch leftovers out for 6 hours and then served it for dinner. The Good

Sometimes we will just get plain fried rice... it can get really dull. The bad

These are cambodian doughnuts which are really tasty, very sweet! Everything here is either really sweet or really sour, there’s no middle!

I have no idea what this fruit is called, but its insanely tasty and I’m going to do everything I can to bring them back to England! The Good

Will started eating this fruit called “mangosteen”, after eating two chocolate bars. Kheang (Our Khmer tram leader) told him after eating 3, that you can die from eating Mangosteen with sugar. After a bit of googling, Will said goodbye to his parents and then woke up fine the next morning, it did make our night though. The Dangerous

This is traditional Cambodian soup... I haven’t managed to try it yet and I probably won’t, they seem to love it though! The unknown

OK, so I’m going to end this with all of the snacks and treats I have found (mostly after being sick at the clinic) to bring a bit of home to me. These are our of community treats so I’ll have to be sick more often to grab some more! We also can buy fizzy at our house, it adds up but a can a day brings back the light in us (a bit of an overstatement as it’s just fizzy).