We are off the boat and on the bus for a five hour drive heading toward Siem Reap. I’m zoning in and out of our guide, Tek’s, lecture.
Every time I tune back in he’s talking about what Cambodians eat…grasshoppers, worms, crickets, tarantulas…. And I’ve stopped listening again.
When I start listening again Tek is talking about rats. I’m very confused about the rat vibe here. One minute they’re talking about how hero rats find land mines.
The next minute they’re talking about the wet season being a blessing (even though it’s 5.5 feet of rain May-November) because it drowns the rats.
I start listening to music in my earbuds. When I come out of my daydream the ground outside has changed from red dirt to the color of sandstone and there are the scrawniest cattle and water buffalo checkering the fields that I have ever seen.
We stop at a rest area to eat the brown bag lunches that the boat crew had packed for us. On the floor of the lunch room are little altars with food, presumably offerings to the gods.
Back on the bus I’m watching the stilted houses pass by the windows thinking that Cambodians in the rural areas don’t have much but they do seem happy. In my ears a song is playing:
The thing about happiness is, it don’t live in bigger houses—Dan + Shay
I tune back in to the Tek Talk and this time he’s talking about the various ways to cook a rat.
A Pierman Sister 
Looks like in Cambodia, you don’t have to go to the zoo to see wild animals. Just go to the food market.
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I opted out of the last wet market because it was making me sick. They butcher animals in front of you and keep frogs in buckets with one leg tied so they can’t jump. At least they know their protein is fresh!
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I’d be especially leery of the bats, at the wet market.
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Yes indeed. Though my husband is sick with congestion so maybe it’s too late for us.
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Lucky you. You guys will be the first to vector it back to the U.S.A. You’ll be famous.
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It’s surprising to me that rural Cambodians eat insects and rats, Alison, and not water buffalos or deer. I read the hog deer in Cambodia are critically endangered and that’s probably why they weren’t eating them anymore. When I had very limited income for a few years, I hunted and we ate venison.
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Our guide says “If you come to Cambodia, don’t move because we eat everything that moves.” I think it must be true. The price of the Brahman cows and bulls is substantial and the villagers that have them hold them as their retirement nest. We have eaten well on the boat but in the countryside it looks like mostly sea life and rice noodles are the staples.
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You sound just like me on bus tours where I have to put in ear buds to drown out the repetition of the tour guide and always in a monotone voice!
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I laughed the day one guide said all his fellow guides talked monotone but as he was telling it, he sounded like Rosie on the Jetsons.
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