Man-o-gram #4
I’ve never been a foodie, it’s just fuel to charge the body, coffee to kickstart the brain, beer to toast with friends, maybe get wiggly. I can appreciate the art craft and care of the prepper, but you know, whatever.
Kids reckon I’m a taste bud lepper, having burnt my buds off years ago with all the chili-dares I did … how hot can you go sort of nihilism. I used to offer cash rewards to the kids for the sick pleasure of watching them howl. Questionable parenting, bad dad.
But yeah re this food thing, I could be coming round. There’s been no shortage of TV- celeb travel geezers roaming the world in search of exotic cuisine, poking their camera’s into the street food woks of less western countries.
And there’s plenty on offer here. Cambodian’s mix in some interesting stuff with their rice and noodles, and everyones a chef. I’m told that once I cross into Vietnam there’s even better to come.
On the plane from Singapore I had the good fortune to be seated next to a successful Cambodian businesswoman, a rare thing I later found out. Zeyy Teyy shared a little of her world, monthly flights to Singapore, HongKong/Macau, in pursuit of her interests in online gaming and solar energy contracts. I got more of the picture when she and her brother Heang picked me up from my hostel a day or two later and drove me to their district for a dinner date. Zeyy was keen to show me what real Cambodian cuisine was all about. Flavoursome bowls of all sorts of soups curries unrecognisable vegetables and animal. I went straight for the chili’s – serious ones, rendering me unfit for conversation anytime soon. They waited patiently.
Zeyy was intrigued by New Zealand. Heang, who spoke no english less so, though intrigued by his sisters plane pick-up. They both worked seven days a week. She told me of her struggle to be accepted as a woman in business, when the cultural norm was to stay home and have children, and of the duality between her mum n’ dad, a policeman, dude who always backed her deviance of straying into a mans world. With some wealth behind them now, she and her brother were putting time and money into vanfull’s of night time food and money drop-offs for the thousands of Phnom Penh’s tuktuk/rickshaw drivers that sleep on board, on the street. Their wheels are their homes. When we finished dinner, they had our leftovers bagged up, to give to security back at their apartment. Food is love.
A couple of weeks back, at Whakaata Māori (Māori Television) I ran the last of my smartphone video workshops before leaving for this adventure. To not bring people together around kai(food) in the course of our work is unthinkable for them. Food is the nourishing of connection.
Zeyy and her brother dropped me back to my hostel past bars of Barry’s, me feeling awed at their hospitality and connection with an effective random, based on a conversation had on a short flight.
I’m always wowed by people that move with good heart. In the business of our small worlds, there is at the core of us I think, a desire to do good, to be good. There’s hope brethren 😊🫣🤣 And i guess we’re all learning how to be somewhere on that spectrum, what a glorious ride.
Next morning in the hostel the wee kitchen is selling western fare toast and coffee, bakedbeans, bacon and eggs to sunbaked backpackers. Not me, I’ve packed my Imodium, I’m off down to the markets to find something to eat that i don’t recognise. There’s no shortage.
Till next time :)
