The Sunday Times May 22, 2022 11Travel Asia
Left, Chef
Nak and her
freshwater-
prawn fritters;
below, Tonlé
Sap, just south
of Siem Reapto jackfruit and mangosteen, spinach soya
milk (which tastes as healthy as it sounds)
and a fragrant duck broth, which we eat
in an alley where saffron-robed monks
exchange blessings for snacks.
My adventures don’t end there. Other
Phnom Penh excursions include a
female-driven motorbike tour to visit
women’s co-operatives selling soap and
beaten-silver boxes, and dinner at
Samsara, a polished teak boat modelled
on the Orient Express where the elegant
restaurateur Chan Suryhat tells me how
she overcame an early life blighted by
the Khmer Rouge. Back on deck, with
a warm breeze on my face, I gaze at the
Royal Palace, emblematic of an even
earlier period in the country’s history
and glittering in the dark.
My nights in Siem Reap, in the north of
the country, are black and starless. I wake
before dawn to visit Angkor Wat with my
guide, Truy Silen. In prosperous times
there can be thousands here to watch the
sunrise, but today we’re the first and nab
the best spot, in front of the mirroring
pond. A small crowd gathers behind us
and, as the sky deepens to royal blue,
the beehive towers — symbolising Mount
Meru, the dwelling place of the gods in
Hindu mythology — sharpen into focus.
The half-light reminds Silen of home;
in her remote village there was no
electricity, she tells me. It was here that
a neighbour taught her English, giving her
a tool to find work away from her parents’
rice paddy, where it was once her job to
scare off the birds. “I thought, ‘I want to
get out of this life,’ ” she says softly. And
that she did. Her tour takes us far beyond
the temples to a backstreet NGO, where
we meet the huge African rats trained to
sniff out mines in the countryside —
another legacy of war.
Then it’s on to Tonlé Sap, the largest
freshwater lake in southeast Asia, and a
floating village that few visitors get to
see. The lake expands 4,000 square miles
in the rainy season, swelling to the extent
that the flow of the adjoining river
temporarily reverses. Reaching it
requires a tuk-tuk ride along an
unpaved track that feels like a
vigorous washing-machine spin
cycle. “We call this the dancing
road,” Silen says with a smile.
When we switch to a
flat-bottomed boat, its slow
chug feels like nirvana.
Reed-fringed channels open
on to a sea-like expanse where
families stand, shoulder-deep,
picking shellfish from the lakebed.
Children wave from floating homes as
their mothers chop vegetables — it’s 9am,
but already they’re preparing for
an early lunch; the day’s schedule is
dictated by available daylight. Every
veranda has a hammock and an old oil
can filled with flowers, while egrets
perch on any spare stick of wood.
At a weaving co-operative a woman
shows me her work. Before Covid, she
tells me, her business employed nine
families, but with Siem Reap almost
tourist-free, the ripples of the pandemic
have ebbed to the lake. There’s no hard
sell, and she’s delighted when I buy a
basket; beaming, she says that she hopes
Silen will bring more tourists soon.
I hope so too — I want others to hear
these stories first-hand, whether from
a princess at lunch or shared over
roaring traffic while riding pillion
around Phnom Penh. It’s these pinball
joys of happenstance that make a trip
feel less like a holiday and more like a
genuine experience.Abigail Blasi was a guest of Wix Squared.
Five nights’ B&B from £3,500pp,
including flights, some meals, transfers
and guides (wixsquared.com)Abigail Blasi gets a unique perspective
on this compelling southeast Asian nation
through a new female-focused tour
I
sip my glass of champagne
nervously, unsure of the protocol
when meeting Cambodian
royalty. But the princess quickly
puts me at ease, her jewellery
jangling musically as we shake hands.
This gossipy lunch at the Raffles Hotel
Le Royal in Phnom Penh is one of many
surprising stops on my tour of the
country. A graceful property among
century-old trees dotted with toucans,
this throwback to 1920s Indochina has
hosted Jackie O, Charlie Chaplin and
Barack Obama, among others.
Princess Norodom Chansita is Raffles’
ambassador — and she’s splendidly
indiscreet about her extraordinary life.
Having fled Cambodia with her family
as an 11-year-old, she lived in exile in
Beijing as a guest of Chairman Mao,
then in Belgrade, Paris and, most
incongruously, Muswell Hill. Her stories
are intriguing and shocking by turn:
she tells me about palace games of
hide-and-seek, whatsapping with
Queen Norodom Monineath Sihanouk
the Queen Mother, who is 85 — and the
loss of 40 per cent of her family during
the regime of the Khmer Rouge.
The Killing Fields understandably
loom large in visitors’ perceptions of
Cambodia, along with the Angkor
temples of Siem Reap. But there is much
more to it, and with the country having
finally reopened to tourists there has
never been a better time to see it.
Slower-paced than neighbouring
Thailand and Vietnam, this traumatised
nation is full of enterprise and energy,
continually rediscovering what it means
to be Cambodian.
The female experience is at the heart
of a new tour from Wix Squared on
which guests of both sexes meet
prominent figures such as the princess,
as well as tour guides and drivers. Alex
Wix, the company’s founder, says that
the idea came from her solo adventures.
“As a female traveller I felt incredibly
safe here,” she says. “I enjoyed meeting
other women and understanding what
life was like for them.”
Phnom Penh has been transformed
since I visited 20 years ago, its unpaved
streets and low-rise buildings replaced
with roads and skyscrapers. I stay at the
five-star Rosewood, and from my room
in the glass tower can see the flashing
lights of the Chinese-run NagaWorld
casino resort in the distance, hinting at
the capital’s future.
In the Rosewood’s 38th-floor
restaurant slabs of beef are suspended in
glass boxes, Damien Hirst-style. Women
in Chanel shimmer like shoals of fish,
and diners eat rare steaks washed down
with £250 bottles of red. Wine drinking
is booming in the upper echelons of
Cambodian society, and the willowyNEW
EYES
THROUGH
CAMBODIA
Eden Gnean, the country’s only female
sommelier, walks me through her
glass-walled tasting room, where more
than 3,200 labels vie for attention with
views of the Mekong River.
Next I cross by ferry to the sleepy side
of Phnom Penh, where life remains
village-like. I pass preparations for a
wedding celebration, with elaborately
fancy chairs for the happy couple and
a Buddhist pagoda the colour of a ripe
peach. Tucked away on a lane, a gardenblazes with pink flowers, fruit-laden
papaya trees and hundreds of herbs.
From amid the greenery bursts the life
force that is Rotanak Ros, better known
as Chef Nak, Cambodia’s first female
celebrity cook. Ros and her husband have
experienced a life-changing couple of
years, moving their two traditional teak
stilt houses from the countryside to the
city. They built a bridge between them,
added a pool and now offer homestays
to those keen to learn more about Khmer
cuisine. “We wanted more than a house,”
she says. “We wanted stories.”
I join Ros in her kitchen, which is lined
with vintage pots and century-old pestles
and mortars, rescued during her travels
around the country. As a child Ros helped
out on her mother’s vegetable stall, but
during recent years she has dedicated
herself to archiving a culinary heritage
that was all but lost under the Khmer
Rouge. Through talking to elderly
people and recording their recipes she
has created her cookbook Nhum (rhymes
with “yum” and translates as “eat”).
Although similar to Thai or Vietnamese
cuisine, Cambodian dishes are more
delicate and subtle. Ros shows me how to
make freshwater-prawn fritters, which are
light and crunchy, and served with lime
and fragrant pepper. I act as sous chef
while she fries fish, which we eat wrapped
in leaves from her garden, dipping the
parcels into a tart tamarind sauce.
Later that day I sample yet more
delicacies, taking a street-food tour of the
capital with Nop Varanith, who grew up
in an orphanage and honed her English
watching Marvel films. She introduces meWe eat in an
alley where
saffron-robed
monks exchange
blessings for
snacksPhnom
PenhSiem Reap
Tonlé
Sap50 milesCAMBODIACHEF NAK; PSZABO/GETTY IMAGES