The Zoo Story Pt.1, Lunch from Heaven

Photos by Amee Evans Godwin - more photos here!

We’ve chosen to go to the Zoo about one hour outside Phnom Penh and Ken will drive us. On the way we will ascend a 300 stair hill to Phnom Chisor, a pre-Angkor temple ruin with fantastic views over the countryside. Bodhi is in good form, hiking the stairs without complaint.

As we traverse the long dirt road from the main highway to the zoo, we spy elderly Khmer people pouring small buckets of water to keep the dust down for the tourists, then others are in begging pose just after them. I remark to Bodhi that this is a job here, pouring small bits of water on long dusty roads in hope of a few Riel from tourists speeding by.

We arrive at a crossroads in the jungle and are flagged down by a kindly looking middle-aged man on moto. We’re looking for some lunch and he is the most enthusiastic to invite us to his little restaurant.

This word is kind of a stretch, its actually just his family with a few burners, cooking pots and preparation and cleaning area under a tarp roof, at the end of a half kilometer of identical spots with other families. The sad truth here is that we are the only car of zoo visitors and it's Saturday afternoon so the prospects don’t seem too good for these businesses.


The family surround us and we begin choosing our meal by seeing the ingredients laid out uncooked. This would be impossible without Ken who is warmly taking into account our dietary needs and fears – for example there’s a giant bowl of small ‘field crabs’, they look spicy and like spiders, but must be crunched whole with the teeth, so we take a pass.

The family and their friends who show up to try and share other treats with us, are curious about Bodhi, so Ken let’s them know the score. There are various fruits offered, including palm fruit, a small milky white pod that is slit length wise, you cup it in your hand, and quickly sip the sweet water from the middle, scrape a bit of the fruit into your mouth and discard the husk. Bodhi, surprisingly, begins eating these and can’t seem to get enough. He’s been a bit skittish about non-restaurant food thus far.

Pictures here will speak louder, this is an incredible meal, one of the best in our lives and we are treated to Khmer country cuisine including broiled chicken stuffed with lemongrass and garlic and dipped in a pepper-lime sauce that is out of this world; a large riverfish with its own preparation and spicy green mango relish; sautéed morning glory with chili peppers; steamed rice; Angkor beer and appetizers of these small prepared rice squares, slightly sweet, but also salty, in thatched leaf packets – delicious. We consume it on a raised platform on one of those woven plastic mats.
Bodhi turns to us and says “I’ve lived and gone to heaven!” After the meal a young girl appears and offers to massage our backs. We are told she has Down’s syndrome, though you cannot tell from her appearance and she seems high functioning. The massage is excellent and she talks a rapid mellifluous babble to Ken, who is patient and amused. He tells us later that some of her words are transposed, such as instead of saying “I was going there” she might say “I there going was”, this is in Khmer so is not a language issue, but her condition.