Siem Reap (Day 1)

I am hoping to find more to Siem Reap than a staging post for visits to Angkor. Maybe something like this extract from John Keay’s book “Mad about the Mekong”.

"The menu in today’s Café Kampuchino in Siem Reap reads like a witchdoctors shopping list. Cambodia’s culinary ingenuity was legendary well before the Khmer Rouge, it extends to various sorts of rat, bat, toad and snake, some of the larger, scrunchier insects, and assorted innards and extremities from more familiar animals. No great courage is required to order these things. Like heavily advertised promotions the world over, they are never available. “No have” says the waiter scrutinising the carte like he’s never seen it before. “Bat no now”, “Entrail finish”, “Frog tomorrow” The list of fare is in fact a wish list. Only rice and noodles with a few proteinous trace elements can be guaranteed. As for the more delectable sections of, say, a chicken – the bits between its feet, its beak and parson’s nose – they never appear. What happens to the breast, leg, wing and wishbone is one of the inscrutable Eats best kept secrets.

We will try Abacus in the evening, again it gets all the rave reviews. can't really imaging we are going to do much more than flop later in the evening. I am sure Perth will seem a million miles away even though we will only have left there the day before.