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On Christmas Day in 2023 my friend Di and I were sitting outside at a roadside restaurant in Cambodia, the occasional ant dropping on us from an overhead tree and supping on a tasty broth made with pieces of pork, wrinkly skinned tofu and vegetables followed by a delicious omelette filled with dried fish. If I had to sum up my trip to Cambodia in one word it would be immersive. So many sights, sounds, colours, flavours, spices, sensations and the constant hustle and bustle of tuk-tuks, survival-of-the fittest traffic, street dogs, repair shops, roadside food stalls and sidewalks sizzling with frypans.

I’d been rather anxious in the lead-up to my trip – finishing work, getting my house, garden and dog ready for the dog-sitters not to mention packing, worrying about getting food poisoning and feeling somewhat hysterical about the prospect of being zapped by a mozzie carrying Dengue fever.

But when I landed on 22^nd December to a laughing and smiling Di – she’s currently living and working in Cambodia – and her lovely driver Theary, a beautiful soul and a very gentle man – all my fears started to dissipate. And Di and I were soon giggling with joy, something we often do when together.  

I jumped straight into it all on my first night and we walked out to a seafood restaurant – crossing a busy main road, one that Di must navigate daily. I have not travelled much in Asia so had no experience in wading out into the traffic – no one seems to follow any rules – and hoping the Red Sea would part. Yikes!

We ate at Nesat Seafood where I had stir-fried squid with vegetables and green Kampot pepper – young green pepper corns that have a zesty bite, a new flavour sensation for me. We also had margaritas – something that became an almost daily ritual over the 12 days of my trip.  

I had had a milestone birthday in October 2023, and Di’s present to me was an overnight stay and pamper session at the Plantation, an urban resort and spa in the middle of Phnom Penh. You approach via a courtyard with pillars and arches showing local art and a carp-filled pond in the middle guarded by dragon statues. The tree in the centre of the lily pond was adorned with lanterns with the addition of red baubles for Christmas. We each had a room overlooking the pool – beautifully landscaped by trees and lush greenery.

In the afternoon I enjoyed a two-hour Khmer massage with a hot compress packed with herbs including turmeric, galangal and lemongrass. Although I didn’t fall asleep as such – the compress was very hot, sometimes almost too hot – I emerged feeling wonderfully rejuvenated, my muscles warmed up and everything flowing.  Soon after my massage, one of the staff knocked on my door and presented me with a piece of cheesecake topped with a bit of gold leaf and Happy Birthday written in berry coulis.  Tempting as it looked, part of my birthday treat was dinner at a French restaurant so eating cheesecake beforehand was not an option.  The plate wouldn’t fit in the minibar fridge so I scooped it up in a plastic shower cap so it would go in – waste not, want not!

After breakfast the next day, a spot of poolside lounging in a cabana and a brisk swim in the pool – it was a coolish 23 degrees, windy and cloudy – we set off to explore Phnom Penh. We walked along ‘no traffic’ street and Street 246, before heading along the river. Di pointed out some of the architectural features – from a coffin shop to art deco and colonial buildings on the opposite side of the river. And the Chaktomuk Theatre (now a conference centre) built in the ‘60s (a golden era in Cambodia) with its fan-shaped structure referencing a palm leaf. It was designed by Vann Molyvann, the architect who pioneered the New Khmer Architecture, combining modernism and Khmer tradition.

Walking on along Sisowath Quay – with great views of the Royal Palace over the road – we passed a group of people playing a Cambodian ball game – the idea is to keep the ball in the air using arms, legs, head, thighs, hands – whatever! Quite fascinating to watch. Then there were the usual food vendors, fortune tellers with their packs of cards and the Preah Ang Dorngkeu Shrine where people were buying lotus flowers, candles and incense sticks. Around 2pm we stopped and snacked on ham and cheese that we had snaffled from the breakfast buffet followed by the shower cap cheesecake, the latter rather gloopy and over-sweet. But at least we ate some of it!

In the distance we looked over at the Independence Monument built in 1958 to celebrate the day the Cambodians won back their independence from the French protectorate on 9th November 1953. The 20-meter-high monument was also designed by Vann Molyvann and is shaped in the form of a lotus.

We spent the afternoon visiting the National Museum of Cambodia, built in the traditional Khmer style with tiered roofs and spires. The museum houses one of the world’s largest collections of Khmer art, over 14,000 items from prehistoric times to periods before, during and after the Khmer Empire which, in its heyday, extended from Thailand, across current day Cambodia to southern Vietnam.  Some of my favourite items were huge sets of bronze bells that were used for tracking elephants and sandstone carved Buddhas seated on peacocks, Garudas (eagle-like Divine creatures) and Apsaras – these are female celestial spirits in Hindu and Buddhist mythology who dance and entertain the gods.   I’d see many more representations of apsaras at the temples in Siem Reap (coming in Part 2).  

We then walked onto Friends Future Factory, which was a complete contrast, a striking barn-like building with curved orange bands forming a suspended half roof. A social enterprise, there’s a farmers’ market at weekends, designer clothing, photo and art exhibitions and a Trabant painted red with black spots – I loved that quirky touch.

We took a tuk-tuk to the Rosewood Hotel and drank Christmas Eve cocktails –mine was an exquisite mix of rum and lychee – at the rooftop bar with views over Phnom Penh. Although we were not spending a second night at the Plantation we returned there for a western-style Christmas Eve pool-side buffet. For the modest sum of US $30, there was a lavish spread of seafood and roast meats, salads and puddings galore. What’s more there was a stuffed Santa sitting on the bar, red tea lights floating on the pool, dried orange, clove and cinnamon scrolls on the table and a choir of children singing Jingle Bells.

On the 25th itself Theary picked us up in the morning and we headed out to Battambang, the third largest city in Cambodia. In honour of Christmas Day Di and I spent a good hour singing through our joint – and pretty extensive – repertoire of carols. Although we didn’t know the words of many of them, we had a lot of fun, and Theary complemented us on our singing!

Our first stop was in Oudong, the original Cambodian capital (1618-1866) before Phnom Penh. Perched on top of a mountain, Oudong consists of a cluster of stupas (monuments housing sacred relics – in this case – of past kings of Cambodia).  There are three main stupas – the second, Ang Duong, is decorated with colourful tiles and the third stupa, Mukh Proum is very striking with four faces looking outwards towards the four cardinal directions, which made me think of a Russian doll, maybe because of the conical shape.

What we didn’t realise – I had a fair bit of muscle fatigue and twitching after descending the 509 steps – is that at the base of the mountain near the path, is a memorial buried with the bones of hundreds of bodies exhumed from one of the Khmer Rouge killing fields. You cannot go to Cambodia without coming up against the horrors of the Pol Pot regime and the legacy of trauma and grief. In Part 3, I will share my experience of visiting the Choeung Ek Genocidal Center in Phnom Penh.  

After our Christmas lunch under the ant-ridden tree, we arrived in Battambang around 5pm to be met with what I can only describe as a hellish racket.  A Christmas and New Year fair with music and stalls was going on right outside our hotel, La Villa, which overlooked the river – well it would have done if the fair hadn’t obscured the view!

La Villa was my choice. It has an old-world vibe – our first-floor rooms were each furnished with four poster beds draped with a mosquito net, a writing desk, a mini chaise longue and shuttered windows. We had drinks and dinner in the art deco bar and eating area furnished with a gramophone and old-fashioned ear-piece phones.  And we savoured another very flavoursome dinner – Beef Lok Lak, a peppery beef stir-fry (which Google describes as a comforting Cambodian dish) and very good sticky rice and mango for pudding.  

It sounds blissful, doesn’t it? The only problem was that the noise of the fair was all pervasive with tinny, screechy pop music blaring out from a floodlit stage right by the hotel which went onto until the small hours and shouty voices – the compères sounded like game show hosts having a heated argument. Lying in my four-poster bed that night, the bed at least softer than the one at Di’s apartment, the music not only made the windows and shutters vibrate, it went right through my body. I rammed in my ear plugs and eventually tuned it out.

The next morning Theary took us to Wat Kor village, about 2km outside Battambang, where we visited the temple and soaked up the peace and quiet in the company of some friendly temple dogs.  Our second stop was Mrs Bun Roeung’s Ancient House – an old-style wooden house built in 1920 (that survived the Khmer Rouge) and is still in the same family four generations later. It is furnished with highly polished heavy hardwood furniture such as a chaise longue, family portraits, musical instruments and mirrors cleverly positioned so people in the room could see who was coming in and out – whether friend or foe. And, most fascinating of all, a description of what the walls are made of – dried cow dung, straw, fermented sticky rice, palm sugar, limestone and stone.

Next, we travelled on to see rice paper rolls being made by grinding up rice and water to make a pulp which is thinly spread across a layer of muslin above a pot of steaming water and then put on a rack to dry. Two women were working away sitting by the steaming pot, their feet encased in polythene bags. How uncomfortable must that be? And to think we complain about RSI from sitting at our computers. Try making rice paper rolls all day!  A couple of chickens were scratching around, a couple of kids playing, and what I presumed to be the husband was snoozing in a hammock… This is why Di’s work is needed – she works in community development and gender equality.

Our last stop of the morning was the Romcheik 5 Artspace and café, an independent gallery where four young artists, who were all trafficked across the Thai border as children, have a permanent exhibition space. Their paintings are haunting, challenging and beautiful and reference trauma, the apocalypse, impermanence, a Buddhist between-worlds landscape and some of the all-too-common social problems in Cambodia – poverty, prostitution, child trafficking and abuse.

That afternoon we swam in the pool at La Villa enjoying the quiet before the music started up again in the evening.  Dinner that evening was at the Jaan Bai restaurant, another social enterprise. Margaritas followed by turmeric pork and Tofu with Kampot pepper.

After checking out of La Villa the next morning we had a final walk around Battambang, taking in the art deco market (stocking up on snacking bananas) with its central clock tower, the Governor’s residence built by an Italian architect, a yellow building with white shutters from the early 1900s, the Independence monument, a newly built landmark  (inaugurated August 2023) reflecting Khmer heritage and serving as a focal point for historical commemoration,  and then back along by the river lined with colonial-style houses in reds and yellows, reminding me of the Peranakan houses in Singapore.

Theary picked us about 1pm and lunch was nuts and bananas on route to Siem Reap. Friends in Melbourne had insisted I try sticky rice in a bamboo tube, so I was delighted when Theary spotted a roadside stall. And, let me tell you, it’s one of the most delicious things. It’s a salty-sweet rice (but not over sweet) with little black beans and you peel back the bamboo to eat it. Forget salted caramel – this is way superior.

In part 2 of my Cambodian travel trilogy I will be taking you to Siem Reap, home of the Angkor Wat temple complex and much more. Stay tuned…