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It should be clear that we put priority around eating good food. We also believe eating local delicacies is an important part of getting the feel of a country, and it may be also obvious that we enjoy trying to cook some regional dishes. We have developed travel habits based on this predilection that are possibly worth reflecting on.
We have never been much of a Hotel couple. The one room without the ability to spread out frustrates us, and the constant need to eat out is exhausting. Do not get me wrong, we like a good restaurant meal, but we are picky about what we choose to eat. There are times when we are one night somewhere that a hotel is a good fit, but for longer stays we like staying in apartments that have kitchens.
Cooking in someone else’s kitchen is an adventure in innovation and economy, you never know what utensils or cooking pots and pans you will find, how much fridge or bench space there will be, or indeed if you can even work out how to use the supplied appliances.
Our strategy is to get our bags in, recon the facilities then go and get essentials (usually from a nearby supermarket, because a supermarket would be close if you chose your location using selection criteria). The next day or so we then head off to local markets to see what is fresh, seasonal and looking interesting, then adapt our menu skeleton to include regional specialties.
Markets, we have discovered, come in a variety of flavours and scopes. Local produce markets that happen once a week are the most accurate test for what is in season, and often the prices are good because you are buying from the producer, so will often learn a little about the providence of the produce. An added bonus to the more personal purchase is sometimes advice on what the actual fuck you do to make it edible (insert relevant “scampi” and “red mullet” disaster stories here for dramatic irony). The itinerant nature of the market means you have to know when it is on, if you are not there then no food for you.
Permanent markets are another option, again popular with the locals, and usually in a permanent venue (building, yard, warehouse etc). The true test of a market is if you can find multiple sources of fruit and vegetables, meats and small goods, cheeses, sweet treats and condiments (we often travel with base seasonings and condiments ziplocked in a packing box in our suitcase, sometimes shop for regional specialties and exotics like local saffron, ras el hanout, sumac etc). Good markets will provide inspiration for meals (like a butcher with confit duck legs next to a green grocer with new season red currants and kipfer potatoes – an obvious meal if you have a working oven, oven proof cookware and a saucepan).
Having already tried a permanent and street market in Paris – , Jo’s research located a Market Street – Rue Mouffetard, a section of a road with a cluster of shops offering fresh ingredients and a majority of locals as customers. Finding where the locals shop, and what they eat is part of the adventure for us, and our menu is always flexible enough to swap in things that are good or interesting. Like permanent markets, a market street has all the fresh and processed items people need to live their lives in that region, and shopkeepers you can talk to (with various amounts of English).
Self catering takes planning but, for example here in Paris, the high end ingredients we purchased from our market run will do 4 evening meals at half the cost of dining out. Don’t get me wrong, we are also going to chosen restaurants, and have learned that NOT planning where we will eat has resulted almost always in arbitrary choices based on levels of fatigue, and often disappointing meals, but maybe that is just us.
Our long haul arrival routine is also fairly well established, as from our initial provisioning run, we get butter, eggs, milk (the basics) and test the kitchen with a simple scramble as a pre-collapse supper before our first solid after-plane sleep.
Food, to us, is an important part of travel. Indeed our first ever trip to Paris was entirely planned around pilgrimages between patisseries that took in landmarks along the way. Research is so easy these days because of the Internet, and Jo is just so good at it. If you enjoy cooking then giving something new a try is a great way to engage with the local culture
The Covid pandemic forced us to put off our travel and retirement plans until 2023. We are finally on our way, with plans to visit Paris, Lisbon in Portugal, Barcelona, driving through Provence, then on through Switzerland and then home. We are still conscious of health and personal hygiene, but to date I have had Covid twice and Jo has yet to catch it.
The anticipation and planning has been intense, Jo has been honing the itinerary for nearly a year, so we are fairly organised, as usual, with some very exciting travel ahead.
Living in Australia, we are plagued by the tyranny of distance. Travelling to the far side of the planet necessitates extensive transit and we have decided to put up with the long haul while we can, leaving closer destinations until it becomes unbearable.
Transit is a pox, and it is peppered with lots of things you cannot control like other people and their behaviour and personal hygiene, facilities and their condition etc. Scrunched together you sort of assume others will be considerate, we had a pair of constantly coughing people beside and behind us for the second leg, and are hopeful nothing eventuates from being exposed to them apart from disgust at how inconsiderate they were to all that surrounded them.
We have long decided that first and business classes do not offer us bang for buck, opting to spend the considerable savings of going economy on more things we enjoy while on holiday. That said, there is economy and there is economy. This year’s initial flight was divided into two legs, Brisbane to Dubai (14hrs) and Dubai to Paris (7 hrs). Given we flew out at 9pm, we chased the dark pretty well the whole trip and that is a looooooong night of more than 25 hours in transit. There are only so many movies you can watch or pages you can read to while away the time, but I marvel at people who can contort and sleep. Annoyingly neither of us have ever been good plane sleepers.
Try (lol, do they?) as they might, planes are about as comfortable as bus travel. As someone blessed (or plagued?) with legs that are not detachable, this cramped form of transport is uncomfortable, but various skeletal issues makes sitting cramped in one position for any period of time profoundly unpleasant. Couple that with no sleep and modular feeding at all hours of the night and it is tricksey to arrive fresh and ready to go. We try to control that as much as is possible, and give ourselves time to bounce back at our destination.
We flew both legs in a Boeing A380 Airbus, those bulging double decker planes that look like they have not got enough wing to actually fly (the bumble bee of the fleet). We get an aisle seat so it is easier to get up, and I walked a number of laps at 30000ft just to keep my legs working. Transit through Dubai was fairly quick, but we did see the sun rise there again, similar to our first ever trip.
The second leg gave us a second breakfast and a fairly seamless trip into Charles De Gaul Airport in Paris in the early afternoon. After a long queue at passport control (pretty sure officers were on a “go slow” protest, part of wider civil unrest in France at the moment, and something we will try to distance ourselves from as much as possible) and an even longer wait for the automated luggage system to vomit out our bags (beginning to suspect they had been sent to Venezuela by accident), we searched out the Train ticket office and bought our passage over to our Arrondissment and metro tickets that we can top up if we use more than 10 each.
The RER train service to Denfert-Rochereau took about 45 minutes, then we lugged suitcases from the station to our apartment, a relatively short walk on cobbled streets. We had clear instructions from our Air BnB host with the code for the front door, this lead to a central courtyard and a staircase CLIFF of 3 flights of spiraling narrow stairs. Jo established a base camp at floor 3 and then I manhandled the suitcases one at a time nearly rupturing myself in the progress. Doing this lagged and fragged was hard work.
Our standard practice when taking up holiday residence is to first survey heating, hot water, bedding and then kitchen facilities. This informs what we need to purchase, then we do a short essentials provisioning run: milk, tea, sugar, eggs, butter, water, wine, baguette etc (the essentials), then back to the apartment for soft buttery scramble before a shower and a long overdue sleep.
Our location is always carefully chosen so we have good access to transport, supermarket, bakeries and coffee for Jo. Our block this stay has 4 boulangeries and patisserie’s alone, so I think we will be fine. Serious grocery shopping can wait until tomorrow, time for bed.
One of many reasons to travel to Cambodia is to visit the myriad of ancient temple complex ruins. Indeed Angkor Wat was on our bucket list, but in researching this trip it became abundantly clear that there are lots (read really lots) of temples to discover, from many eras, in many styles, in various states of decay and restoration.
We booked a 2 day personal tour through angkorguidesam.com and chose the 2 day classic (mini & grand tour) which looked like it was both extensive and informative. Our guide, Somondy, turned out to be absolutely fantastic, astutely judging our levels of fitness and fatigue, guiding us to the very best vantage points, helping us avoid the hordes of Chinese tourists, and really being personable and informative about all things Temple and Cambodia. We cannot speak more highly of him, his guidance really made the 2 days unforgettable.
Day 1 we started early (to avoid the crowds and the heat) and headed to the tourist ticket centre (you buy a pass that lets you access the temples for a number of days, it has passport photos and other details, that are checked at temple entrances for all non-Cambodians, natives are free to visit all temples, as they are still considered places of worship). Passes secured we then headed to Angkor Wat, probably the most famous of the temple complexes.
Some context: ALL currently accessible temples have been reclaimed from the jungle – some to varying degrees. Due to the tropical climate, jungle grows really fast. Banyan tree seeds are deposited in the roofs of buildings by bird and monkey poop and grow between the stones, gradually tearing the structures apart. Add to this the fact that much of the land here was saturated with bombs during the war, and studded with land mines (still a massive problem) and we realise that visitable sites have had a LOT of work done on them to restore, reconstruct and stabilise stone structures built centuries ago WITHOUT MORTAR (yep, just mounds of perfectly joined stacked stones). This in itself is remarkable, but the scope and scale of these temples is mind blowing. Add to this that most of the temple complexes are built on swampy land, that relies on the natural buoyancy of the water table so they do not sink and you begin to appreciate the magnificence of the engineering, let alone the architecture, which is something else entirely.
Angkor Wat is square ish, about 1.4km per side, has a 200m wide moat (hand dug), massive outer walls, 4 gated entrances, each a compass point, inner walled compound, consisting of stone plinth, stairways to the upper levels, cloister-like galleries encircling mountain-like towers surrounding a central tower at the highest level. I thought I understood its scale, until we entered the east gate and began walking to the inner compound. Rising from the ground are massive stone buildings, with cliff-like stairs. The journey towards enlightenment is supposed to be a struggle – this is enforced by the design of the buildings – to go higher you have to negotiate breathtaking flights of stairs.
The building complex is astonishing on many levels, but from an astrological perspective it is aligned so the king can watch sunrise through planned meridians on both summer and winter solstice, Angkor Wat is the worlds largest calendar. The configuration of the towers and their designs are informed by seasonal information, lucky numbers and complex astrological calculations that, alone, are amazing. When combined with the engineering and architecture, it is little wonder lunatic conspiracy theorists suggest aliens dunnit.
We explored, climbed to the top, marvelled at the geometry and layout of what must have been a thriving place of worship, then left by the west gate (most people enter here). The vast terraces still hold remnants of buildings like libraries, but the miasma of timber dwellings, promenades and other infrastructure necessary for living is long since lost – timber is food for termites, Cambodia is rife with them.
From Angkor Watt we then headed to Angkor Thom, an even BIGGER complex (at 10 square kilometres) and began exploring the many temples within this walled and gated compound. There are 5 gates, oddly 2 on the eastern wall (one called the “ghost gate” was used for funeral processions to cremate outside the temple). Here we first saw clear evidence of good and evil: 54 gods playing “tug of war” against 54 demons using a Naga (or many headed snake) as the rope, with Buddha looking on (because, apparently only Buddha can appreciate the balance between good and evil, and value them both). We saw statues of Buddha sitting on a coiled naga, with the head of the naga (a multiheaded cobra) providing shade everywhere. Sadly most statues were incomplete, missing heads, hands and feet (because the Khmer Rouge discovered these bits of antiquity fetched good prices on the black market, and funded their war efforts this way).
Inside Angkor Thom we walked through the towering South Gate, through the Bayon complex (named after a French archaeologist who re-discovered it). Bayon was the first temple we saw with huge faces adorning the compass points of each tower. Serene faces thought to be images of Buddha or the king, or gods and demons (no one is really sure). From here we headed to Baphuon, a small tumble down jungle temple we both loved. We then trekked to the Wall of Royal Palace, then up and over the Elephant & Leper King Terraces, remnants of infrastructure on a massive scale. Our guide then decided to stop for lunch, we ate well (if a little expensively by local standards) before heading (at lunchtime) to the jungle temple “Ta Prohm”, used in the filming of “Tomb Raider”. This strategy seemed to be a good idea, and worked brilliantly to avoid the herds of Chinese tourists that had been bussed to lunch.
We really loved the tumble-down jumble of temple remains, mossy carvings, and Banyan Tree root cleaved structures. Vast piles of rubble, partially collapsed passageways, tree root curtains and dramatic precarious gaps in leaning massive walls made for striking scenery – perfect for Lara Croft to find the hidden treasure we all know must be there somewhere. Adjacent were vast fields of numbered mossy stones, awaiting someone to piece together one of the universes most complex jigsaw puzzles.
After Ta Pron, we drove to Ta Nei, another “jungle” temple, closed to public view inside because of the tumble-down ceilings, trees growing up through walls and general jungle taking over again vibe. Conservation and preservation will eventually come here but for now it’s charm lies in the fact that a great and powerful building is undone by time and nature. It is difficult to remember all the names, or whether I forgot anything as the day was long, it was baking hot and so humid you could cut the air with a knife. None the less, when we finally said “enough”, I think we had seen all but one of the temples on the itinerary for the day, had walked miles, sweated buckets and expended more energy than we thought we had. None the less it was a brilliant day, so many moments of awe and wonderment, so difficult to convey with mere words or pictures.
Day 2 was the outer circuit, car travel far and wide to see temple complexes further away and, to our surprise, we saw a whole lot of different styles, both in architecture, configuration and decoration styles. There were a few ancient kings who were really prolific with their building plans so some commonalities were also seen.
Our first temple, East Mebon, was an “island” temple, originally in the middle of a huge man-made lake (long since dried up and filled in), this temple was a tribute to the water element. Each corner, each level was adorned with beautiful full-size carved elephants. Each of the meridians was guarded by lions (clearly the carvers had never actually seen a lion, but the imagery was at least consistently inaccurate).
On to Ta Son temple, and we were shown that most of the structure was made of bricks (as opposed to quarried limestone or sandstone as was usual). Amazingly, the structure was still largely original, and had brilliantly withstood the test of time. The climb up was perilous, down even wobblier but we made it, puffing and perspiring as the humidity was on the increase, storm clouds rumbling in the distance. Our next stop was Neak Poan, the “hospital” temple on a man made island in the middle of a newly refilled lake. This temple was really different as it offered spiritual healing. Each of the 4 elements were represented by animal fountains at each of the compass points, issuing holy water into pools that pilgrims bathed in to cleanse their spiritual impurities. The central pool had a shrine to Buddha and offered enlightenment. Pilgrims in ancient times came here to pray, cleanse and heal. They bathed in and drank the water. These days, if you drank the water you would need to go to hospital I think.
We lunched early, adopting the strategy of visiting temples at lunchtime to avoid the crowds. This far out there were fewer tourists – the roads were rough and the going a bit stomach churning, but only recently accessible by car, so getting popular. After lunch we went to the “Lady Temple”, a small but exquisite rare pink sandstone temple with some of the best ancient carving that exists. Every surface was covered in deep relief work, crisp imagery and decoration, complemented by the pink sandstone made this one of our favourite temples. Charming scenes of gods and men, dancing ladies, animals and floral motifs, just beautiful.
Our last temple was the partially restored Banteay Samre, a temple in the style of Angkor Wat, but much more compact. Built to house the remains of a kings son, it had a lovely collection of inter connected outbuildings around a central tower, covered promenades, naga balustrades and fine carving, a perfect end to what was an astonishing experience. You run out of superlatives, suffice to say we were very happy with our exploration of some of the temples in and around Siem Reap, and would recommend visiting in the cooler times of the year.
