Traveling: The Meaning of Life

I used to be a fussy eater. Yet, during my first backpacking trip with my best friend through Cambodia and Vietnam early this year, my eating habits were transformed. This I think is the essence of traveling. Finding out about yourself in relation to other cultures and how much you can adapt to different situations in life.

After arriving in Phnom Penh, Cambodia by a long, bumpy bus trip from Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam we were starving! After checking in at a hostel we asked the local tut-tut drivers on the side of the road where we could find some tasty food. They directed us to a ‘market place’ where there would be an abundance of food, or so they said. However, as we found this market place we discovered it was the local’s area of dining. As we walked around everyone was staring at us, yet we continued to choose a small, authentic Khmer eatery. We chose out meals and waited with anticipation as they came out to our table. My first reaction to this ‘noodle soup’ was that it was water with a few noodles in it. I then discovered what I expected to be some sort of animal testicles! Wow, this is different I thought and ate them anyway. Turns out what I thought to be testicles were just some sort of meat balls luckily (though I’m still not entirely convinced). As I was eating my meal a young Khmer girl came to our table and stood with us a while talking to us in the local language. All around us were locals enjoying their evening as a community just like I would back home. Although at first we had doubts about our dinner it turned out to be one of my favourite meals of the trip because of how integrated into the local Khmer culture this encounter allowed us.

The next night we had already chosen a restaurant to eat at from the Lonely Plant travel guide. It was called ‘Happy Herb Pizza’ which appealed to our exploration interests because the description was of ‘weed pizza’. Never trying this before (I swear) and wondering whether it would actually be marijuana I ventured out with my best friend and another friend we had met that day. We were seated and the waitress came over for our orders. I asked, “How happy are your pizzas?” To which she replied, “How happy do you want them?” and we answered, “Very happy!” About an hour later we found out how ‘happy’ those pizzas were and yes, they were very happy indeed. From this experience I was amazed at how different my Australian lifestyle was from the laid back, easy going Cambodian life.