Using well and truly the sharpest knives I’ve ever laid my hands on we got taught how to cut all the spices. Lemon grass, chilli, 14 (!) cloves of garlic, Ginza (like ginger), kaffir lime and salt. Grinding these all together to may a paste (the chillies were dried out with a little oil helping to make it paste like)

I paid $10 to do a cooking class at one of the city’s best Khmer restaurants this morning. We were taken to the markets to collect our ingredients. After giving up a vegetarian streak anticipating Asia and its edible animal forms and market “delights” but also cultural cuisines and I felt as though the act of being able to pick and choose what we emit from our diets is a very westernised and fortunate thing (not that it’s makes it any more moral) I just didn’t want to turn down local offerings of foods that are luxuries for them (especially living with a family for a month), or miss out on cultural experiences. That said, this market was enough to almost immediately change this back very quickly. At least you knew the fish was fresh, cause they were still squirming about when the Cambodia lades would grab them and chop their heads off in full view of the customers. Fried bats, turtles, snake fish, pigs head, you name it, it was there. We collected our vegetables (Cambodia has the best mushrooms I’ve ever eaten and the strangest looking), coconut and spices for our chosen dishes and head back to the restaurant.
and

The second largest city in Cambodia, I loved this a lot more than the other cities I had visited (although by the end I was missing and longing for Pursat again). A huge river runs down the middle of the city with long walking paths and lush open park type spaces running the entire length of the river making the wall home rather enjoyable. Every morning at 6am I’d wake to the sound of techno Asian music blasting as the locals get their aerobics in and every evening at 5pm their is an abundance of aerobic and martial artists, children with balloons and sugar cane juice stalls through out the stretch of parkland.

On my first night in Battambang I ate dinner at this Cambodia noodle house, Lan chorv Khorko Miteanh. This man hand made the noodles on order for each of the meals. Here is “Chinese noodle soup with beef” as suggested by one of the Cambodian boys (there was intestine soup on the menu, which definitely did not take my fancy). I was the only westerner here, which was cool I thought.