Slipping from One Culture into Another

DATELINE: July 25, 2013
Patricia E Lyon

It's like walking from room to room but not as obvious. I love it and I crave it and it is more difficult to do in my hometown.

Our multi-cultural experience became more obvious when we ate at the Weiner Schnitzel Restaurant in Siem Reap, Cambodia, on a dark, rainy night. Sam had individual meat loaves with gravy and mashed potatoes. Deanna had a kind of sumptuous goulash with spaetzel, and I had deep fried cauliflower, which I did not know was Austrian. Brave Prem, our driver and translator, was dubbed most brave for ordering sausage and sauerkraut with mashed potatoes. We were in a former Khmer restaurant with tiled walls. There was a Khmer flag on the wall with an Austrian flag under it. The labels on the beer were written in Israeli. We could see the Khmer cooks (women) on the second floor in a loft painted lime green with cartoon fish decals. Our host introduced himself as being from Vienna. The food was quite a leap from our routine rice with stuff on it. We were painfully full. When we got back to the hotel, Sam wrote a review on Trip Advisor. He had promised our host that he would.

Next: a brat fry. Stay tuned