Not only is Cambodia awesomely beautiful but arriving to be greeted by family members Jennifer, Alex, Lauren and James is wonderful. After a month of staying in impersonal hotels and apartments it’s great to be at the home of people we love. We haven’t been to Angkor Wat yet but have been to town and walked along the river, which runs by their house. As many of you may know from following the news there has been extensive flooding in this part of the world and Siem Reap has not escaped. As our plane flew in there was so much water on the ground I had to check by map to make sure the city was not located on the sea. It’s not, inland many miles but looked like an island from the air. Fortunately, although some of the streets have a few inches of standing water, most of the streets are clear and the river is starting to go down. We’re OK, but many people’s homes are flooded. We were at Lauren’s school today and one of the teachers who is Thai says many family and friends in Bangkok are also flooded out. This is the rainy season but it has been unusually bad this year. The government just canceled the water festival which is a big festival here, like Mardi Gras for New Orleans.
We saw several of Alex’s restaurants and he is truly a genius at designing these. Each one has a theme and the décor and menus are beautifully done. The food is great, too. He’s about to open a middle eastern themed restaurant and I’m sure it will be great. Alex and Jennifer took us to wonderful Cambodian restaurant last night and we had some classis dishes. Green mango salad, a fabulous soufflé type dish of fish, coconut and lemon grass baked in a coconut shell and looking and tasting out of this world, spring rolls and satay that were very tasty and several stir fries. Also, a great eggplant dish. The flavors are subtle, a little hot, but not in a burning way. We’ve been eating very well.
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