a street 51 christmas

From Christmas in Cambodia

A Street 51 Christmas. Street 51 is one of the bar streets in Phnom Penh, and features the infamous Heart of Darkness night club, Zeppelin, a bunch of girlie bars (the Black Cat, Shanghai), and Howie's, the place where I spend most of my non-working hours. I went there on Christmas night to get a Christmas kebab for Christmas dinner since I Christmas didn't-feel-like-eating until then.

From Christmas in Cambodia

There are 3 24 hour dining kiosks along this strip and they are all delightful once it get pasts 11:00 PM. The chicken shwarma kebab had french fries in it. And garlic sauce. And stuff kept on falling out of it, delicious stuff. There are also what I term "weird Cambodian burgers" on offer. They may not be weird, but the only time I ate one was at 4:00 AM on a particularly interesting Friday, and I don't really remember anything about it other then a single, truncated frame of me eating it with lots of ketchup and thinking, "Well, this is odd spicing."

From Christmas in Cambodia

Something about Santa Claus hats is a cultural universality. It's like Mickey Mouse and Michael Jackson. There are probably people in the backwaters of Papua New Guinea who own Santa Claus hats. Here, they're all the rage among the hip young things out for a night of larceny on Street 51. I mean, I own one.

From Christmas in Cambodia

The Heart of Darkness wishes you a Happy Holiday's. This is the club where they had that shooting a while back, but you know about that if you've read anything about Phnom Penh nightlife. Hailing from New Orleans, nightclub shootings are nothing particularly exotic in my eyes, and the Heart is a pretty standard nightclub with thumpy-thumpy music, overpriced cocktails, and lots of people making out with each other. I like going there to dance poorly on occasion, but the creeper-to-me ratio is occasionally rather high and sometimes I run right back outside again. The female security guard is lovely: last time I walked outside to wait for friends, she let me sit on her chair, did my hair into braids, instructed me on how to do a Khmer "wai," and had a discussion with me about boys.

From Christmas in Cambodia

They had an absolute winner of a tree in the mall opposite the Heart. I find myself becoming a bit of a connesuir of Cambodian Christmas trees. Sort of like a wine snob, only a thousand times more esoteric. The Ultimate Hipster, in a way. Maybe I'll produce a guide no one will read.

Oh, wait. Already doing that.

	From Christmas in Cambodia

Happy Merry Christmas, everyone.

fcc christmas dinner

From Christmas in Cambodia

Fruity cocktails. Necessary for Christmas.

A big group of us had Christmas lunch at the Foreign Correspondent's Club. Every tourist in Phnom Penh goes to the FCC in the hope of catching a glimpse of a sexy and danger-loving "journalist." They will almost always be disappointed because 1. journalists are poor and 2. the FCC is expensive and 3. you get the picture. Journalists prefer dive bars where a gin and tonic can be obtained for two bucks and there's a laptop in the back with music and preferably, a pool table. That's what journalists like.

The FCC is all jewel toned and classy and has a menu with an emphasis on tapas and wood-fired pizzas. It's basically like being in Northern California if you make an effort to avoid looking out the windows. It's usually full of diplomat and senior NGO types who can actually afford to eat here, and middle aged tourists doing the "where's the journalists at?" glance-around with little actual success. The food is good. And expensive. But good. They did have a set menu for Christmas, and the food was quite good. A rundown.....

From Christmas in Cambodia

Croquettes with brie. These were high end cheese sticks involving lots of mashed potato. A worthy effort in a country with a low cheese-to-expat ratio. Still, a cheese stick, dressed up as it may be, is a cheese stick and reminds me mostly of being 18 years old and incredibly drunk in the Berkshires of Massachusetts at 4:00 in the morning. And truckstops. Less so fine dining. But, hey, there's Brie in it.

From Christmas in Cambodia

A very nice salmon salad 'ala mode' though I couldn't quite work out that what meant. Salmon is a bit hard to come by in Cambodia, and this salad with avocado, dill, celery, and a bit of sour-cream was lovely when eaten on crunchy toast points. Fresh and crispy is good news on an 85 degree Christmas day.

From Christmas in Cambodia

The main attraction was a choice of suckling pig or turkey with stuffing, mashed potato, roast potato (so much potato), gravy, and vegetables. I think the suckling pig was the way to go. Nice and crispy skin, still flavorful inside. A little bit too much fat, if there's such a thing as too much pork fat. The herb stuffing was pretty good, as were the potatoes. They forgot a friend of mine's stuffing and he was about to go back in the kitchen and wage war upon them, but they brought it out and crisis was just alleviated, in the nick of time. You don't come between Americans and stuffing on Christmas day, friends. You just don't.

From Christmas in Cambodia

This fruit crumble dessert was truly good. Apple and pear with a nice light crust, a bit of vanilla ice cream, and a delicate raspberry sauce. Not too heavy, fresh and hot, a good buttery crust. Not so heavy as to knock you on your ass post-suckling pig. The FCC may have a way with desserts. I will investigate further.

A good Christmas effort that put us all in incredible food comas by around 3:30 PM. I had these plans of taking photos around town and instead came straight home, passed out on my bed, and woke up around two hours later with heartburn and a headache and a sense of love for mankind. Now if that isn't what Christmas is all about, I don't know what it is.

Happy Merry Christmas.

happy christmas

From Christmas in Cambodia

Merry Christmas, everyone. Well, it's no longer Christmas here (as of an hour) but the sentiment counts. I thought my first ex-pat Christmas might be a morose experience but it certainly wasn't. Maybe I was supposed to go drink alone and have dark and sad thoughts about the direction of my life and the movements of the planets and what my family was doing (being asleep, mostly) but I couldn't summon up the energy for ennui. I had a good time despite myself.

From Christmas in Cambodia

Christmas Eve involved: six different bars, an expansive and meat centered buffet, the Cambodian Space Project, and an inordinate amount of passion fruit cocktails mixed with vodka. It ended with 3 AM swimming in the pool at Elsewhere with a bunch of Australians. I had a 5000 calorie bolster and thus was totally incapable of getting drunk. This actually got a bit expensive.

From Christmas in Cambodia

There may have been a lady-boy involved. (Hooker bars are incredibly festive around the holiday-time. Everyone's dressed up in red and white and dancing to WHAM which they love around here and all the sexpats are in a real good mood themselves. Just fascinating). One of the ladies had an enormous Viking helmet on but the photo didn't come out. I'm sad, too.

awesome christmas eve dinner at cantina

From Christmas in Cambodia

Courtesy of Cantina on Sisowath, I got to have an absolutely fantastic home-made (well, bar made, but here, that IS home) Christmas dinner. Don't cry for me, Argentina. I ate four plates of this amazing stuff. Where did they find real cranberries? The rolls are home-made. There was brie, people. Brie. Four turkeys. Ham. Sweet potatoes. Dressing. Real actual pumpkin pie. And the best part? On-call Jim Beam with my meal.

From Christmas in Cambodia

Here's Jet showing the turkey who's boss.

From Christmas in Cambodia

That turkey died a hero's death.

From Christmas in Cambodia

The entire spread in yellow hues. The decor in this bar is sort of Pancho Villa movie chic. I like it.

From Christmas in Cambodia

Not just ham. But sexy ham.

From Christmas in Cambodia

Seasons greetings from sweet potatoes with marshmallow. Yes.

happy christmas from the raffles

From Christmas in Cambodia

The Raffles Hotel was decked out extremely tastefully for Christmas. I walked inside and felt sort of like I was in a San Francisco luxury hotel for a second and got very nostalgic. They were remarkably nice about me taking photos of their Christmas decorations like a big freak. I want to go to the Elephant Bar soon. The Le Royal is a big part of Cambodian history and was The hotel in town until the Khmer Rouge took over- it was a very happening place during the French era. During the KR invasion, many people holed up here, including a profusion of journalists, which you'll know all about if you've seen The Killing Fields or read any of the books on the era. It's a helluva beautiful hotel.

From Christmas in Cambodia

Daniel Southerland, the photographer who covered the 1970 KR invasion of Christmas and stayed at the Le Royal while doing it, wishes you a Merry Christmas. (I don't actually know if he does or doesn't, but his photo has been appropriately festived. If you're reading this Dan for some bizarre reason, I apologize in advance and hope you have had a wonderful day).

nagaworld's christmas wonderland

From Christmas in Cambodia

I liked watching families knock out their holiday photos at Nagaworld. Teenage girls doing faux-sexy poses in front of the gingerbread house. Little kids going into spasms of joy at the sight of SO. MUCH. GLITTER. in one place.

From Christmas in Cambodia

Even grandmother is getting in on the action. I feel a bit odd about taking people's family photos from unintended angles but such is my lot.

From Christmas in Cambodia

I was never that cool when I was 15.

From Christmas in Cambodia

This lovely lady was maintaining the Christmas Pastry Wonderland inside the ginger-bread house. She posed for me. No one seemed to be buying the Christmas Pastries-force of exoticism, people who have no idea what in God's name a "stollen" is - but they looked lovely.

From Christmas in Cambodia

I like the Minimalist Artsy Gold Reindeer motif, actually.

From Christmas in Cambodia

I have no idea why this nice looking businessman is here but he posed so delightfully for me. Here he is. He looks so jolly.

the house christmas band

From Christmas in Cambodia

The band at Nagaworld appeared to be about my age and profoundly uncomfortable with the Christmas carol concept, being more used to belting out Khmer ballads and Lady GaGa covers at 3 AM. But they managed to memorize and execute a number of the staples, albeit with entirely too many Rs. Bless them. I wonder what they were thinking about.

From Christmas in Cambodia

It's really quite an impressive stage. They trotted out small cute children earlier to work their way through Jingle Bells. There's some sort of Christmas MEGABUCKS type raffle going on as well, I believe.

From Christmas in Cambodia

The milling crowd as seen from above. Tons of people are coming into Nagaworld just to check this impressive tableaux out. I can hardly blame them. It would be reasonably impressive in a major American mall, and here we are in Cambodia. My.

From Christmas in Cambodia

I would like to add that the keyboardist is in heavy contention for Raddest Mofo in Cambodia status. Just sayin'.