New visitor at the Old Market

It’s great to be living with local people and my priority here is to work with the SAFE foundation, help Phalla, teach teachers and children. After a nap I feel a great urge to get out. I want to meet other people and hear what brings them here. My hostel is in the quiet side of the city (quiet at night and not when there are celebrations at dawn). I decide to do the Tuk Tuk thing. Tuk tuk’s are wonderful moped led carriages, typical of the place. The come in different shapes and are colourfully decorated. Today my carriage is a bat mobile!

In the streets of the old market, people try to sell me things, give me rides, feed me but I don’t feel hassled. A polite no ‘ teh orkoun’ goes a long way. I don’t like everything I see: some rude American tourists with derogatory behaviour, a fifty year old man hugging and fondling a teenage Cambodian boy. 

My mission is to taste the amok fish dish that Lucy has told me about. I find a beautiful looking restaurant with very reasonable prices. At the Angor Palm the young waitresses and waiters are extremely nice and caring. Possibly because they help me practice my language skills. I don’t know all the ingredients of amok fish (yet) but the dish consists of fried and beautifully spiced fish, flavoursome greens and some type of cabbage. It is (of course) served with rice. My neighbouring table is excitedly celebrating a birthday. Geni, introduces herself and gives me the thumps up for my choice of dish. Genie is Australian, used to be a teacher and is travelling through Cambodia , to Vietnam and Laos with her husband and two friends. We talk about the Safe Foundation (they love the ethos and jot down the website address), my home in Wales, Geni and Peter’s visit to Wales (and their love of St David’s), Phalla and the Cambodian Child and Hope Association, their travels, and my homeland Greece (as well as their Greek connections-everyone’s got one right?). The young waiters come in and out of the conversation, first joining when they hear where I am from and adding me to their list of ‘first sightings’. They also (like my Korean passport control man) have never met a Greek before. ‘Perhaps all Greeks are as friendly?’ they say. Here I am again in the position of a national ambassador. Perhaps I think and then perhaps not, particularly at current times.  Peter on the other hand just says, ‘Well I have never met a Greek with an English accent before’. Hmmph, Welsh accent Peter, Welsh….And just like that I am invited to stop by when in Melbourne.