Fresh Spring Rolls

Makes 6

Their Note

These spring rolls are delicious and the possibilities are endless. Add fresh prawns and avocado or perhaps spice them up with some diced chilli.

My Note

Yes! I have made these before and I know that they are very similar to every other recipe that I have used to make these. However, one thing that was different to every other time, and made the rolling much easier, was to soak the rice paper in cold water until it is just soft. Another difference was the sauce – it is amazing! Try it out some time.

Ingredients

6 rice paper sheets

Grated or finely sliced carrot

Mint leaves – bruised

¼ small cucumber diced

Vermicelli noodles

Salt and Pepper

Sliced cooked chicken breast (optional)

Coriander leaves – roughly chopped or bruised

Small dish of water

Vietnamese basil leaves

Basil leaves – bruised

Egg (optional)

1 tbs of soy sauce

Method

1. Prepare all your ingredients first so the rolls can be prepared quickly.

2. Remove any tough stems from leaves.

3. Place dry vermicelli noodles in a bowl of boiling water for several minutes until soft – strain and rinse with cold water.

4. Mix the egg and soy sauce together – poor into a fry pan and cook as a pancake. Remove, slice and cool (optional).

5. Pour a little water over a large plate to cover the surface (when we did this the water was room temperature).

6. Dip the rice paper sheets into the water and place on a flat surface.

7. Add a little of each of the fillings to the paper.

8. Add a touch of salt and pepper.

9. Fold in each of the two ends and then roll tightly.

10. Serve with chilli or the spring roll dipping sauce.

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Fresh Spring Rolls – Sauce

3 Tbs fish sauce

2 Tbs palm sugar

2 Tbs peanuts crushed

2 Tbs lime juice

1 tsp garlic

1 tsp shallot

Method

1. Mix palm sugar and fish sauce and lime juice together.

2. Boil this mix, take it off the cooker and set aside to cool.

3. Add garlic and shallots and stir well.

4. Some chilli can be added for hot sauce.

Cooking Class

I decided to do something a bit different this Sunday so I booked myself into a cooking class.

I have already found myself a trusty travel agent and have been there numerous times already - booking bus tickets, a taxi to Poipet and now a cooking class.

The morning began with me arriving a little early to my pick up point, which I decided to make the travel agents as it is too hard to be picked up from home. I got chatting to the lovely K'mai lady who works for 'Beyond. Unique Escapes' and she gave me a history of herself and the organisations that she works for.

We got on to the 'I'm not pretty because I don't have white skin, therefore no one will ever marry me' topic. I seem to be having this conversation ALOT! She was a lovely girl and really liked a chat which was good because we were sat there chatting for awhile (I think the driver was running a little late to pick me up).

The cooking class was to be held about 10 minutes out of the town center in a little village. Siem Reap is funny like that, you can do this in any direction, just drive for between 10 to 15 minutes and you are in the middle of rice paddies and a rural setting.

We arrived at Sojourn where the class was to be held, and boy was it an oasis in the middle of poverty! As part of the class, we were invited to drop in on a local family to see what their kitchen looks like and how they go about cooking their meals. The family that were visited were a young couple (the wife was my age), and they have three children, the youngest being five and a half months old. From an outsiders perspective without doing any research into it, it appears that the families surrounding Sojourn get a reasonable amount of assistance from them. For example, for a five minute visit to this family, they received two kilograms of rice. They also had a water filtration system that had been set up by Trailblazer. The tour guide told us that the families are not imposed upon, they are only visited by the cooking classes about once a week. The living conditions of this family were quite similar to one of the families that I visited from Anjali House, where I am working.

We spent the day cooking six different dishes, all of which were very tasty. I will post some recipes for those of you that are interested. The dishes included;

Fish Amok
Fresh Spring Rolls
Sticky Rice Flour Balls with Palm Sugar
Mango Salad
Nom Tong Noun
Cambodian Curry

Welcome to Cambodia (& your first five day weekend!)…

Kampot, Kep & Rabbit Island

The long weekend began with a four and a half to five hour bus trip down to Phnom Penh. I was really hoping to spend the weekend reading my book, but I was seated next to a lovely K’mai man who decided to give me a language lesson throughout the trip.

I arrived in Phnom Penh to a torrential downpour, so made my way to Street 240 and ‘The Shop’ for a relaxing lunch whilst I waited to hear back from Bek about directions to her house. I had a week’s worth of pent up frustrations (i.e. house hunting!!) that I needed to get off my chest, Meagan – Bek’s housemate let me go on my little rant whilst Bek was busy skyping her husband.

The first order of the day was a mani/pedi, all three of us made our way to tips and toes and we chatted as our nails had some life brought back into them!

We were running a little late to get to Vijay’s place, but quickly realised that we weren’t the only ones, when Jacqui hopped out of her tuk tuk at the same time as us. A quick taste test of Angkor’s Stout was in order while we waited for Guy to arrive, he was the unlucky one that had to work on Friday. We piled into out taxi and spent the two and a half hour trip playing car games to entertain ourselves and take away some of the discomfort of being squished into the back seat of the car. For about two thirds of the trip I had been on the look out for a toilet, in the end we had to request that the driver pull over, in our broken k’mai. I felt so much better, until we drove on a further five minutes and I realised that we had arrived at our destination!

We spent the evening at the Bohdi Tree which we later discovered backs on to the river and then caught a tuk tuk back to Irena’s. A lovely wooden home, on stilts which is located in a semi built up area of town (although when we first arrived, because it was night time and there are no street lights we thought that we were in the middle of nowhere!!).

The next day we went on an adventure. We thought that we were only going to Bokor Hill to see the casino. It was a bit of a surprise when the tour guide started pointing at our thongs and saying “You’re hiking in those?!”. We thought we’d be ok, and we were, but it was a steep and slippery slope and there may or may not have been leeches that decided to attach themselves to us! We got to the top and were then directed to our mini van, it did have brakes but they decided that a plank of wood should be put behind the tyres to ensure its stability as 15 well-built westerners hopped in!

The casino was an amazing site to be seen, it is a ruin that we could wander through as we liked, this included getting lost as we made our way upstairs, through the rabbit warren. We had lunch in the old hospital and the tour guide proceeded to tell us of the plans that the developer has for the area. I’m afraid that next time we visit (not within the next year but ‘next time’) the whole entire hill side will be covered in hotels, houses and who knows what else!

By this time we had been informed of our second surprise of the day – a visit to the local waterfalls and they were beautiful. As we arrived it reminded me slightly of Bell Gorge in the Kimberley region of WA. The water was kind of murky and didn’t look appetizing to swim in but it also wasn’t very hot on the top of mountain.

We were exhausted by this stage, but the tour company had also organised for us to go on a sunset cruise down the river. We made our way on to the boat that was waiting for us, only to find that this was not the right boat, we had to jump on to that one that had just pulled into the mooring instead. We sat on top on the roof, drank beers, ate rambutans, made lack lustre conversation and watched the world go by. We were meant to be out on the water for two hours but reached a unanimous decision at the half an hour mark that we should head for home – we were ravenous! We had been told about this great little pizza place down the street from Irena’s house and we gorged ourselves on pizza. With very full tummy’s we made our way to Irena’s house for a well-earned sleep – or at least we tried to… but we got incredibly lost! We had people giving us various different directions, although we eventually found our way home.

The next day we went to Epic Arts Café for a yummy start to the day. The tuk tuk collected us for our trip into Kep, where we would meet the boat that would take us to Rabbit Island. In Kep there is a limit to the amount of people that can travel in a tuk tuk within the town. This meant that Jacqui, Irena and myself had to wait about half an hour for the driver to drop the others off to the boat and come back to collect us. There were many families out and about, everyone seemed to be on the sea shore enjoying picnics in the lovely, sunny weather.

The boat that collected us looked as though the propeller was made out of whipper snippers. On the way over two fish jumped into our boats – it was hilarious. We arrived on the island and the skipper took us to his friend’s restaurant where we could organise our accommodation for the night. We stayed in these wooden, thatched beach huts that were quite comfortable. They had squat toilets and the showers didn’t work, but we spent a lot of time at the beach but we didn’t have to worry about that. The food on the island was pretty average. The menus looked great but we everything that we asked for wasn’t available. We found these tyre tubes that were available for us to float on and we asked the policeman who was sitting near them if they were for us to use and he said yes. We had a great time floating around and then when we lazily removed ourselves from the water to find that the policeman wanted to charge us $7!! What extortion – he never told us before we used them, nor was there a sign! We walked away saying that we would come back with payment later, with no intention of doing so – we thought he was taking us for a ride and just joking with us! He came searching for payment whilst Vijay, Irena and I were peacefully reading our books and the others were having a massage. He was casually loitering around the massage tables, waiting for them to finish when he spotted us!! Poor Irena had to deal with him and grab some money whilst Vijay and I sat there pretending that we had never seen him before – sorry Irena! We walked in the other direction down the beach later and saw that there was a different place that also had the tyres for hire, they were also charging about $1 per tyre! Oops! The rest of the holiday consisted of Jacqui and I teaching the others to plays Kings and a relaxing morning at the beach before we headed back to Kep.

When we arrived in Kep we had to do the annoying ‘two trips into the town because I cannot carry six people in my tuk tuk’. I was in the second travelling group and by the time we got to the seafood restaurant there was a beautiful assortment of treats to enjoy! The crab and fish dishes were AMAZING!

We then took the trip back to Kampot, had some afternoon tea and said our goodbyes to Irena. We became even more friendly on the way back from Kampot because the car ride was a little squishy!

I can’t wait till our next trip together!!

A 'Home' in Siem Reap

I finally have a house!!

Somewhere that I can call home, instead of a hostel room, with my clothes strewn in different piles across the floor (I know what you are thinking right now mum… “that’s just what you are like at home”!!).

Not that there is anything wrong with the hostel that I am staying in, it’s lovely and I would highly recommend it to anyone that visits Siem Reap.

The house hunting process took a little longer than I thought it would – partly my fault and partly because of circumstances.

The first place I looked at was only 150USD a month, I’d budgeted 250USD, so this house would have allowed me some extra cash but was the size of a shoe box!

I found out about a different house, when my Director and I were at the bank depositing a cheque. We got chatting to an acquaintance of his that was leaving town and she mentioned that her house was available for rent. I went and checked it out after work and it would have been great, it had more space than the one I’d seen earlier and was the same price. The landlady was really sweet. I was very interested in the property and told the current tenant that I would take it. She explained that she did not want to rush me, and gave me the evening to think about it. After calling her and confirming the following morning, I was very disappointed to find that I was called two days later saying that the property was no longer mine. I had already made plans to go away for the King’s Birthday long weekend, so the house hunting would have to wait. There was fun to be had in Kampot, Kep and Rabbit Island – there was no way that I was going to be missing out!

I tried to find the real estate agents office yesterday at lunchtime, but I couldn’t communicate with the tuk tuk driver about where I wanted to go. I made an appointment to see the real estate agent today and with map in hand arrived in time to be shown four houses/apartments. Two were right next door to the real estate agents office, one was right beside the river – a perfect location and the other was very close to the two properties that I saw on Day 1.

The house that I chose looks a lot fancier than what I was expecting to be staying in but its light and bright, will be great for visitors, has a huge living area and dining room, nice kitchen and best of all – TWO BATH TUBS!

The landlords are lovely, a family that lives on the same property but in a different house. The wife is a stay at home mum, the husband a tour guide and they have four children, three girls and one boy.

The experience at the Real Estate agents was quite funny, as you enter, on the wall above the receptionists desk are about 100 cheesy photographs of people shaking hands and not only do you signs the documents but you must also give your thumb print.

I will forward pictures of this over the weekend, I move in on Saturday!!

A bus trip from Phnom Penh to Siem Reap

I wasn’t feeling well, I had a cold and was acting like a boy with man flu. I dragged myself out of bed, finished packing and popped downstairs to the hotel lobby where I was to wait for the small bus that would take me to the big bus. I was quickly warned by the driver and the assistant at the front desk of the hotel that because I had so much luggage I would have to be very careful at the bus station, making sure that it all got aboard the bus. 

I sat myself in 3A, very glad that it was a window seat, something to lean on while I had a nap. I made the effort to introduce myself to my neighbour, a Dermatologist from Germany and then promptly fell asleep. I left the hotel just before 7am, and we arrived at our lunch stop at about 11.30am. The poor Dermatologist thought that we had already reached Siem Reap, I was the one to inform him that I thought we still had about two hours to go. 

Myself, the Dermatologist and an IT Banking Specialist from Hong Kong found ourselves sitting together at the table, actually I found myself falling asleep in my food, still grumbling about my cold. It was at this point that the IT Banking Specialist informed us that the bus had stopped for a while during our journey because of a flat tyre. I am really glad that I wasn’t the only one that hadn’t noticed this, the Dermatologist must have been having a nap too! 

My napping was constantly interrupted by other things; the constant warning honk to cars, push bikes, pedestrians, cows etc., as we overtook them and the loud karaoke that was playing on the screen in the front of the bus! The window slowly became my enemy, not my friend. Each time I was woken up, as a reflect I would smack my head on the side of the bus, ouch! We finally reached our destination at about 2.30pm, we’ll see how a different bus goes this weekend when I do the return journey!

First Night on the Job

I received a phone call at about 5.30pm on Sunday night, informing me of a change of plans… That’s cool, a few drinks and maybe some nibbles at the FCC, meet a few people from around Siem Reap… What should I wear... Smart Casual… No problems, see you at 7pm!

Glad I didn’t wear jeans!

It turned out that we were meeting with some reasonably high flyers from Texas. I’m guessing that’s what “I own a few businesses in Texas, oil…’ means? They mustn’t just do drinks and nibbles because I got served a four course meal, I’m really glad that I knew which cutlery to use! I’m also glad that I didn’t have to pick up the bill.

Whilst making witty conversation and trying my best to impress the high flyers (many thanks to Fremantle for the numerous opportunities to hone my skills), I also ‘sold’ a holiday to the trip organisers - the travel agents that were in charge of this particular trip, after all the Kimberly region of WA – especially Broome is “a much better option than Uluru”. Do I get any commission Tourism WA? 

I also met the author of Angkor: Cambodia's Wondrous Khmer Temples, Dawn Rooney. This was very exciting as I had purchased this book prior to my departure. I did have to guility admit to Dawn that I didn’t have the space to fit it in my luggage and was therefore waiting for my first visitor to bring it over with them.

As the night wrapped up and we went our separate ways I got a warning from my Director… “Don’t expect this type of evening to happen regularly whilst you are here, it’s a very unusual event”.

Tuol Sleng - S.21

On Saturday we visited a place called Tuol Sleng, the former office of S.21. For this entry I am not going to pretend that I know anything about the history of Cambodia, what I will do though, is supply some photographs, websites that I have seen referenced in regards to this part of the nations history and also some of the literature that was handed to me as I entered this Genocide Museum.

Toul Sleng is a Genocide Museum and the former security office of S.21 in ‘Democratic Kumpuchea’. Pol Pot (a name that he created, as it had no meaning and less syllables, making him more ‘working class’ than his previous name – Sa lut Sor) created this office in 1975, it is located in the middle of Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia. The office was designed for detention, interrogation, inhumane torture and killing after confession from detainees was received and documented.

Prior to becoming S.21, the site hosted Tuol Sleng Primary School and Tuol Svay Prey High School.

Figures of prisoners that were held in S.21 are approximately as follows;

1975…..154

1976…..2250

1977…..2350

1978…...5765

** These numbers do not include children killed by the Khmer Rouge. This number is approximately 20, 000.

Overall, it is estimated that the Khmer Rouge regime killed between 2 and 3 million K’mai people, the majority of these being city dwelling, educated people.

At Tuol Sleng we saw an image of an Australian man, David Scott, which intrigued me. I did some further research and found that not one, but two Australians were killed by an order from Comrade Duch. For more information on David Scott and Ron Dean, two men who went sailing and ended up in the worst place at a worst time, click here.

In the same article is some information about Sydney Schanberg , one of the only westerners to escape the regime. His story is featured in an autobiography called Beyond the Killing Fields and there is a movie called the Killing Fields which provides some details of his story. I saw this before arriving in Cambodia and it is well worth watching. For more information on Sydney's story, please click here.

I wish to find out some more stories from the perspective of the K'mai people, however, these stories will have to be added to this blog as time goes on and I'm sure that eventually there will be many.

In 2001 the Cambodian National Assembly passed a law to create a court to try serious crimes committed during the Khmer Rouge regime 1975-1979. This court is called the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia for the Prosecution of Crimes Committed during the Period of Democratic Kampuchea (Extraordinary Chambers or ECCC).


The government of Cambodia insisted that, for the sake of the Cambodian people, the trial must be held in Cambodia using Cambodian staff and judges together with foreign personnel. Cambodia invited international participation due to the weakness of the Cambodian legal system and the international nature of the crimes, and to help in meeting international standards of justice. An agreement with the UN was ultimately reached in June 2003 detailing how the international community will assist and participate in the Extraordinary Chambers. 


Case 001 was the first case before the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia. Kaing Guek Eav alias Duch, the former Chairman of the Khmer Rouge S-21 Security Center in Phnom Penh, is the defendant in Case 001. 


This case is currently at appeal.


For more information on Comrade Duch, please click here.



There are four defendants in Case 002: 

• Nuon Chea, aged 84, former Deputy Secretary of the Communist Party of Kampuchea, for more information, please click here; 
• Ieng Sary, aged 85, former Deputy Prime Minister for Foreign Affairs, for more information, please click here; 
• Khieu Samphan, aged 79, former Head of State, for more information, please click here; and 
• Ieng Thirith, aged 78, former Minister of Social Affairs, for more information, please click here. 

The four defendants were initially indicted and ordered to be sent for trial in a Closing Order issued by the Co-Investigating Judges on 15 September 2010. Following appeals from all four defendants, the Pre-Trial Chamber confirmed and partially amended the indictments and ordered the case to be sent for trial on 13 January 2011. 

The defendants are indicted on charges of crimes against humanity, grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions of 1949, genocide; and homicide, torture, and religious persecution within the meaning of the Cambodian Penal Code from 1956.

The trial is expected to commence in the first half of 2011.

At Tuol Sleng the had an art exhibition, some of the photos depicted in this are located below. They are painted by a Dutch man named Peter Klashorst, for more information on his works, please click here.

I know that I have not done this story justice, but I wanted to give a brief overview of what I have learned thus far.

Until next time,

E

The Beers of Cambodia... Anchor v Angkor

Well it makes it a little confusing when the two main beers available in a country are Anchor and Angkor...


From what we've worked out so far....


Anchor is a little cheaper, in taste and cost, probably the equivilent to a VB (except I don't know if this is true in regards to the actual taste of VB, as I haven't drunk it before, more so just in regards to the quality of the beer when compared to Angkor). Anchor is pronounced Aan Chore, which is a little confusing because there is a picture of an anchor on the front of the bottle.


Angkor, definately hits the spot after a hot and sweaty day, out and about on the streets of Phnom Penh.

                       

Big Fish, Little Fish

I have a very reputable (as verified by a current AYAD) theory on Cambodian traffic rules.

• The bigger you are, the greater your influence on the traffic within your vicinity.
• If you cling to a big fish, and are a little fish, this also makes your trip a safer experience.
• By placing many little fish together, you can become a big fish, as long as you move as one.
• The traffic moves like water, and flows, rather than having a specific order, and it moves at a slow and steady pace rather than a mad rush, with people speeding.

This will now be known as 'Elysse's Theory on Traffic in Cambodia or Big Fish, Little Fish', please feel free to reference me in any transportation or traffic journals :-P