Day 18: Old Market & Cooking Class

Today was our first buffet at Silk D’Angkor Boutique Hotel, faced with a large spread complete with waffles and doughnuts there was a lot more sugar than our previous arrangements, but there was still a multitude of warm more traditional breakfast food including rice and soup. 

After brekkie we headed out to get our nails done which was a nice treat, but seeing as there was a substantial group of us we had to do it in two groups which gave us some time to look around. We then headed back to the hotel and hung out at the pool having lunch there also. Then we did devotions and began our debrief for which we tried to recall the entire trip and write down what happened each day without any help from our journals or the blog. It was remarkable just how well we were able to remember the small details, and we even started having to not write things down because we were running out of time as we had a tour booked.

On this tour we went the market where we had been previously the night before and wandered around for roughly an hour looking at all the beautiful handcrafted items and some more interesting works as well. Then we piled back on the bus that had taken us to the market and drove for about fifteen minutes to the outskirts of the city for our cooking class. The place was beautiful, a small hut like building open on all sides that looked out onto the fields. After donning our hats and receiving our various instructions we set about making our three courses; Green Mango Salad with Smoked Fish, Khmer Chicken Curry, and for dessert, Nom Plae Aí which is sticky rice dumplings that are stuffed with palm sugar.

We then got to enjoy our meal and received certificates and a little box of tea each which was lovely. Once getting back to the hotel a few of us went out to see what various shops were about on the street and others went for another swim. By nine o’clock most of us had either retired to our own rooms or were chatting and then went off to bed a little later to have a good nights sleep on our comfy mattresses.

​Jess