We're getting brave in our old age. Or stupid. Typically, today we set off for a shopping trip in town without any breakfast. We headed first for Kampot Coffee. Big mistake. This place is owned by the quintessential sexpat, a grotesquely fat, grotesquely disgusting, grotesque Englishman, who leered fag in mouth at the entrance scoping out young schoolgirls on the street, before heading inside to pat his female staff on the bottoms.
Disgusted, we fled before our food arrived. We then spent the next hour in Sihanoukville's pre-Chinese New Year packed market, initially enjoying the site of women shopping in their pyjamas, then fighting off the pangs of hunger and growing increasingly irritable with each other, while trying to find an ornate Cambodian version of the classic Indian tiffin box (stacked silver lunch dishes).
Eventually sense prevailed and we settled down at the market's most popular noodle bar, tentatively looking for somewhere to stick our feet that wasn't in a pile of used tissues.
Despite these unpromising beginnings, our noodle lunch was a triumph: can there be anything more nourishing in an hour of need? Certainly not today. Revived, we headed back with renewed strength to tackle the raw meat section, where carcasses, brain and all other types of offal were being dragged around in shopping trolleys, and hauled up on display hooks with glee. Waitrose this ain't. But marvellous all the same.
Bill for two: US$2, £1.30, AU$2.25
