3 Recommended Restaurants for Families in Phnom Penh, Cambodia; Part 1

LOT369

Lot369 is a little pricey compared to other restaurants in Phnom Penh, but by looking at their menu, you can see why. Some of that money goes into paying a fair wage, plus they offer foods that are hard-to-find in other restaurants. When compared to restaurants in the U.S., it is still extremely affordable. Here are some of the options:

Here is a coconut milk, turmeric latte from Lot369, as they were out of cashew milk. It's great to see non-caffeinated warm drinks available.
 
We saw the lemongrass and ginger kombucha; but there were several other flavors.

Lot369 has vegan, vegetarian, and gluten free options. They have an environmentally-sustainable mindset. They had re-usable coffee cups for sale if you wanted a drink to go, bamboo straws and recycled plates and cups. The furniture was made from pallets. We chose to eat in the upstairs room, because it was connected to......


The all-too-rare-in-Cambodia kid's playroom! It was amazing to sit and talk with Benjamin while the kids were enthralled with new-to-them toys for a good while. Going on dates in an international setting with kids can be tricky, so this was a great find! They have kids-eat-free day on Thursday, so we’ll have to try it again.
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 KILIK



At Kilik bakery and cafe, you can buy the drink of your choice, averaging at $2 and receive two pastries free. In addition, they bring a free cup of iced/hot Jasmin tea. This means we can order two drinks for adults and one or two (they are BIG) for the kids to share, and get enough pastries for everyone! With the tea thrown in, it's a great deal. Our favorite pastries include chocolate croissants, apple bread, banana bread, berry filled pastries and cupcakes. They have recently started offering sandwiches as well, so we can get out of there with lunch for under $10. (That's insane with a family of 6). Plus, the staff is friendly and competent, and there is comfortable seating. Kilik also has an air-conditioned meeting room closed off  from the main seating area if you need that kind of space.
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 CYCLO CAFE

 
The Cyclo cafe was an interesting place. They have several seating options, including an outside area up stairs.

It was almost part museum, part cafe. The boys enjoyed modeling the rickshaw. This is a really fancy rickshaw compared to the ones we see near the riverside that are often a beaten up red or green color, or like this one.

Cyclo cafe has many drinks around $2, and they are a good size, too. This was a framed Cambodian stringed instrument. it is similar to the one played here. In the bathroom, there were these sprouting seeds. They are similar to these avocado seed sprouts, but I couldn't tell if they were for sure. What's your best guess?

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So, if you are looking for a sustainable variety of food, great value, or a cultural experience, these places are a great place to take a break and recharge with family. We hope you try them and enjoy them as much as we have!

(This is not a sponsored post. We only share it because our first month in Cambodia, we pretty much lived off of peanut butter because we couldn't 1)find food, and 2)find our way back home from said food, and 3) it was frustrating to find affordable options that were good for a family of our size, hygienic and tasty.)

Water Festival 2017: The White Elephant

Water Festival is a big deal in Cambodia. The kids and Ben got a whole week off of school for it. We wanted to go somewhere with more nature than we have normally, but not drive for hours trying to get there.

Ben decided to take us to the White Elephant hotel on the edge of town. It’s about 15 minutes driving if you have traffic and has plants everywhere. It feels like you’re in a garden.

The kids loved the river-shaped pool best of all, especially since in had a bridge going over the middle. Elias got on the bridge and we threw the ball back and forth over it while he tried to catch it. Since there weren’t many people, it was a good game.

I enjoyed trying new Asian foods. The cashew chicken was amazing and is now my new favorite dish!

The kids liked exploring the garden and finding statues. There were huge statues of a camel, dolphin, dragon and this horse. The White Elephant is definitely a place I would recommend, especially for families.

Morning Glory/Water Spinach, Vietnamese Persimmons/Golden Apple and Guava: New-to-us Khmer Food

I've learned several new fruits and vegetables lately. I thought I'd share them with you.

Below you see the water lily stems that take special talent to harvest. When you pinch off the stem, if you are not careful, mud will be drawn up the stalk. The Khmer lady who sells these has four children depending on her at home and something happened to her husband. She walks around town with a big basket of these carried on her head calling out the name of them in Khmer. Our neighbor said she uses these to make a salad with thin strips of the water lily stem, chicken, lime juice and herbs.

Water spinach, or morning glory, are the stems of the sweet potato plant. They are used in soup the same way you would use spinach and with a similar taste. Many times it is used in a soup with rice noodles.

I had no clue what these were when my friend gave them to us. My Vietnamese friend helped me out with the Latin name: Diospyros decandra, or a type of persimmon. One way the Khmer eat these is with the flesh mashed in a mixture of milk, sugar, and chia or basil seeds. The pulp is pretty astringent in the mouth, so all of that can be pretty necessary!

Here you see a guava. These were really popular in Mexico, but the ones I saw were smaller, many times made into preserves. Here guava is enjoyed dipped in salt, sometimes with garlic powder, chili or sugar.

The kids all tried a bite and thought it was good, but even better, the pasabulong from our Filipina friends who came home from holiday and were so kind to think of us:

The biscocho is from Iloilo and the piaya is from Negros Occidental.

Yep, it was yummy!

Elias had fun trying on his father's shirt... it'll be a few years before it fits.

 

The boys love to help cook! Here they were making cinnamon rolls:

 

One of them wants to be a fireman who owns a restaurant on the side when he grows up. The other one wants to build "helico'ters." I can't wait to see what they become!

Mondulkiri, Cambodia: Part 2.5 The Coffee Plantation and Pizza

While we were in Mondulkiri, Cambodia at Nature Lodge, we went exploring nearby places. One that wasn't a waterfall was this coffee plantation (video here.) We didn't even find it on purpose, but Ezra had to stop to use the restroom and Elias was carsick so I took them both with me and we went exploring (as the bathroom was hidden down a windy trail around beautiful trees.

Some of the large plants had green berries on them that I thought might be coffee...

Down one trail, hidden in the trees, we came across a two story water slide. We didn't know what it was until we got to the top and saw...

that the slide went all the way down to the lake!

 There were also banana trees:

And what I think is jackfruit now, but I called durian, trees:

Elias thought their horizontal branches that went all the way to the top looked like a great bench!

The lake didn't look very big, but it had been channeled under the road, and into sluices to irrigate the coffee plantation.

This tree with the red leaves was one the boys found interesting, but I don't know what it is called:

And this hosta-looking plant that got super tall was cool:

It was nice to be surrounded by nature and hiking through trees rather than concrete buildings and whirring traffic.

We even found a cabin on our hike back up to the van.

The day after this we met our new friends and had more fun playing around Nature Lodge than going on more explorations. However, we did find an awesome pizza place out on a dirt road called Mondulkiri Pizza. The guy who owned it had previously worked in Phnom Penh making pizza. The restaurant went under new management and they changed all of the recipes to inferior ones in his opinion. He moved up to Mondulkiri and opened his own restaurant, got married and started his family there. He liked the more natural environment and pace of the place. We didn't blame him, and his pizza was incredible. I highly recommend you check out Mondulkiri Pizza if you ever go that way.

The pizza place had a spacious lawn and a lazy river flowing through the back yard. After lunch the kids went exploring the grounds and the owner mixed a little flour and water to make a simple dough bait and made a bamboo fishing rod from scratch. The kids loved it!

Pet Moths

Talia keeps wishing for a pet, especially a horse, but since that's not possible right now, she's been befriending every moth that she sees in the house. 
One day, she had one sitting on her hand and she was talking about how beautiful it was... and then it flew into the bug zapper (because there are so many mosquitoes lately) and she cried: "I loved it and it had died like Uncle L!" I'm not sure how much of that was drama and how much of it was real. Ben tried to be sympathetic, but he couldn't help laughing at the same time just because of the sheer amount of drama in her voice.

For now, we just share our friend's pets. Cats are super abundant and wild here, there is always 4 or 5 sitting outside around our garden, on the walls, in the trash cans or around the gates. They're constantly caterwauling at night making all sorts of interesting music. They're also always reproducing, so the most popular pet seems to be the kittens. (That might be because the dogs are likely to get eaten. Seriously.)

Some people have fish, the fashionable Emirati's have things like lions, tigers and cheetahs, and there are things like foxes at the animal markets (a place many people find cruel and are trying to change.) 

A pet that surprised me were the parrots caught wild here who were eating the sunflower seeds from a friend's sunflowers. Her husband is a capable trapper and was able to catch them. I've never seen wild parrots here, (though I thought there was one in the neighbor's mango tree.) The kids were excited to see the birds here, but I'm not so sure the birds were excited to see them.

I'm not sure that we'll ever get a pet here, since we don't have long term plans to stay and it doesn't make sense if we are just going to leave. It's also difficult to know what to do with one if we have to go to the city or travel home on vacation... but one day, maybe, we will settle in a place where a pet can thrive and who knows? Maybe Talia will get a horse some day.







Then again, we did wake up to this in our garden yesterday morning... maybe we can just have wild, outside pets for now.

Making Popsicles

As the temperature has started creeping up again, we've been enjoying making popsicles.

They're pretty simple: We started with two ripe bananas.

Added a cup of plain yogurt.

And some blueberries that we found for a decent price at the mall, YAY!

Poured it into some (sorta small) silicone molds and froze it.

Elias was apparently paying close attention because when those were gone he tried to make his own before I found him in the kitchen with the hot cocoa mix (left from introducing "winter" traditions)  trying to make chocolate popsicles:

We did make chocolate ones, with the same ingredients plus the addition of two tablespoons of this drinking chocolate mixture. It's probably better this way than as hot chocolate in this weather, after all.

Playing with Colors

Things for kids to do here include driving to the beach, going to the park, going to the Lady's Club which has an inside swing set and toys, going to the mall, going to a friend's house, mostly things that involve a car or walking a ways. We usually walk everywhere with no problem, but the further into the third trimester that I get, the more contractions this causes, so after homeschooling, at-home activities have included a lot of reading, making cards and letters to mail family, spraying the gardens, building with blocks, puzzles and a lot of art. Talia and Elias especially like playing with colors. So far we've been....

Finger painting:

Drawing: (Here, a girl running away from an apple tree because they apples were falling on her head.)

"Writing":

Making Papi and "I love you" card that's supposed to be a fox made out of hearts:

Desert Taxi