On the road to Banteay Chmar

We are driving out from the city into the Cambodian countryside to visit the small temple town of Banteay Chmar.  We will be staying with local families there.  The trip requires hours in smaller cars, as the roads are so bumpy a bus can't get through. We have professional drivers for each car, and it's a good thing we do!  There is construction--not marked, just sudden holes being worked on by men using buckets and sticks.  Cows wander up on the road.  We've passed tractors, motorbikes, bikes, small carts, and overloaded freight trucks.  It's quite a ride!

We are driving past dry rice paddies, brown and stubbly.  Desultory white cows are foraging, ribs sticking out.  Many of the small houses we ass ate built on stilts.  There must be a world of difference in this area between the current dry season and the soon to arrive wet season.  

At intersections, there are small stands where people are cooking local foods right on the spot.  Rice cakes, ginger cakes, while frogs on wood spits, whole batter payed and deep fried birds that are eaten in a few bites, larger fried birds, and big shiny black roasted water beetles.  Of course we stopped to try some!  We learned to take the wings and stinger off the water beetle before eating. Dana and Sopgie led the way, with Jess and Cayleigh close behind.  Then we goggled while our guide, Borin, popped a whole fried bird in host mouth and crunched it down.  We had a few brave students willing to pick at the bird meat, but n one quite dared to chomp a whole bird.  Cambodians lived through years of great hunger, so they learned to eat everything, including parts and animals we wouldn't eat.  Makes sense from that point of view.