Cooking Snake In Mondulkiri

An article I wrote for Khmer 440...

I was sitting in a restaurant in Mondulkiri, listening to backpackers haggling over elephant rides – “That one’s a very bullshit operation for the elephants…Yeah, but we got offered two bucks cheaper from the other guy” – when Brendan finally called. “Hey, So Pheakj forgot to wake me again. Do you fancy going to the waterfall?”

He hired two moto drivers and we headed off through the windswept valleys surrounding the one-horse town of Sen Monorom. Children waved at us as we crawled past trying to avoid craters in the red dust roads. We climbed higher, the engine screaming, and arrived in a jungle clearing with an elephant tethered by one ear to a shack. Just out of reach were 100 green bananas, and the beast was eyeing them morosely while batting away flies with his ears.

Brendan looked at the waterfall jump. It was usually about 10 metres high, but he said the water level was much lower than last month, not just from the dry season but the dam up river. The Elephant Man threw a stone into the water indicating where he claimed it was deep enough to jump. But as he was not jumping himself, I was taking no chances.

We climbed down through the jungle and bathed in the pool. Something was nibbling away at my feet. I swam to the other side and foam thundered down around me. The sound was deafening and for a moment I forgot all about what the locals call “anacondas”. A little boy scampered across the rocks, picking up beer cans. We climbed back up and the Elephant Man took a photo of us and printed it out on a contraption hooked up to a car battery.

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Chinese Food In Phnom Penh

An article I wrote for Khmer 440...

The worst service I ever had was in London’s Chinatown. There was a cloudburst and then heavy rain so I scurried into one of the restaurants. The place was packed, and I was looking round trying to spot a table, when a furious-looking waiter pounced on me.

“What you waaaannn?”

I noticed people had stopped eating and were looking at me.

“Table for one,” I said slightly pompously.

The waiter eyed me suspiciously.

“We gorr no table for one! You go down stair!”

Then he was off in his shiny black shoes, scuttling waiters.

I stood there for a moment, confused. I didn’t like crowded restaurants at the best of times. The sniggers from nearby tables faded, and I spotted a staircase leading down. At the bottom, I was met by another waiter.

“Hi there, how are you doing?” I said.

His hate-filled eyes bored into me. It felt like a scene from Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence.

“Wery busy!” he spat. “What you waaan?”

He was worse than the last one. People were listening intently, pretending not to notice.

“Table for one, please.”

“You got no frenn? You go upstair, he give you table!”

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