Making Dteuk Dtray Bpa-aim with Neng

Battambang province, Cambodia - October 18, 2013 - Another fantastic Cambodian condiment recipe, dteuk dtray bpa-aim (sweet fish sauce).

Starting with ingredients. a) dteuk dtray (fish sauce), b) son daik dai (peanuts)

c) ombul dtoom (ripe tamarind)

c) k'dteum baran (onion - just a little bit), d) k'dteum sor (garlic - not this much)

e) s'leuk k'dteum (spring onions), f) madte (chili)

Now the recipe. 1) Crush the peanuts.

2) Add the tamarind and 3 or 4 spoonfuls of sugar, depending how sweet you want it.

3) Mix that up a little.

4) Cut up the chili, garlic, and onion.

5) Mash.

6) Add to the fish sauce.

7) Stir.

8) Garnish with chopped spring onion, and that's it.

It is eaten with fresh greens...

... and grilled fish.

We also ate it with some quails and sour morning glory soup.

Flood Days

Battambang province, Cambodia - September 5-7, 2013 - Cambodia is underwater. The Sangke River in BTB is starting to burst the banks, with massively strong currents that have already nearly killed some people, there's been crocodiles spotted swimming around the streets near Wat Samraong K'norng, and school is out. People are out frolicking, fishing, driving, swimming, and living in the muddy water. Me and my home are miraculously dry.

Me driving through it.

Road to my school (I was pretty happy about this one).

People fishing in the overblown river.

To the Village

Takeo Province, Cambodia - October 3-4, 2013 - So it's a hellish journey down to Takeo - first of all in a nightbus for six hours in which the driver who we were sat right behind was having lurid phone conversations and honking his horn, then he stopped and slept for one hour, locking everyone in the bus with the A/C turned off, while he proceeded to snore. I started losing it and making loud noises. He woke up and drank two Red Bulls then started driving insanely fast because he kept falling asleep at the wheel. Yup, transportation, eh? Next it's a two hour tuktuk ride from Phnom Penh to Takeo, through a massive traffic jam caused by the exodus of people leaving the city to go to their villages of origin. Although we only spent one day and one night, and spent over 16 hours in transit, it was worth every moment.

This visit was for Pchum Ben, but I didn't manage to get photos of any ceremonial stuff, as it's a bit hard to take photos when you're offering things in supplication to village elders. But here's some other stuff from the journey.

This traffic jam occurred on Thursday and Friday consecutively, and extended from the city many kilometers out into the countryside.

We were forced to take backroads, as the condition of the main road was deteriorating drastically.

Then finally we're on the village path.

Pig guts.

Eaten with prohok (fermented fish paste), very strong, heavy kind of rotten flavor.

Rice sproutlings.

This is what it's like to be a frog. Kind of.

Crabhunt.

Interesting ants floating on top of the water.

Harvest.

Vicious.

In this tree is an obscure fruit used to make soup taste sour. The Cambodian word for it is plai gror-sang, but because it is rarely used I have not been able to find out the English name for it, despite much searching.

A massive plai dror-lait (winter gourd).

A massive plai nor-noang (snake gourd).