Crickets, spiders, snakes

Clockwise from top left: raw beef, lettuce, white mushroom,
raw beef, Chinese cabbage, flowering cabbage,
crickets, spiders, silkworms, more bugs, snakes on spits

My 6 week volunteering job in Phnom Penh started with two days of introductory orientation. We were instructed about the cultural dos and don’ts, learned a few Khmer language phrases, were sent to the market to practice bargaining skills and ordering food at the stalls, had a sightseeing tour around the city and ended it all with a fancy dinner where we were supposed to taste the local food.

In Cambodia they eat everything. Everything. For appetizers, we were served spiders, crickets, silkworms, grilled snakes, ants, worms, frogs legs… (The French girl noticed they forgot snails.)

In case you’re wondering how they taste I have to disappoint you. I didn’t try any of them. Sorry.

The main dish was a soup that we cooked ourselves, fondue-style. That's why the table was laid out with plates of thinly sliced raw beef. Unlike back home, where beef is often eaten raw, here it was meant to be cooked. There were also plates of vegetables such as Chinese cabbage, flowering cabbage, more green leaves that I still haven't identified, baby corn, white mushrooms, sliced carrots. There were also tofu cubes, yellow noodles, rice noodles and rice.

The table had holes where they put buckets with hot coals, just like a fire pit:

They covered the fire pit with a lid and added soup:

We then dropped ingredients into the soup to cook and spread out beef to grill:

 

As often happens with a fondue, there were too many people trying to cook too much stuff in a dish that was too small. It took forever to cook anything. I was hungry because I hadn't had any appetizers so I just ate rice and raw vegetables.

 

They finally brought out the Angkor beer. A waiter constantly walked around dropping giant ice cubes into our beer glasses. I would have complained that you don't add ice to beer, but it was so hot around the fire pits that the ice really helped to keep the beer cold.