After the short flight from Phnom Penh to Siem Reap, I needed a snack.
The meat, fish, and produce inside Siem Reap's small "old market" deserves little more than a quick look, but you might do a double-take at one of the prepared foods. Pan-fried silkworm pupae (small bag; 800 riels, or about 21 cents at the time) combined the attraction of popcorn that's been sitting in the soggy summer air with a faint, inoffensive earthy flavor.
I filled my belly more conventionally at another station ("stall" is a stretch, considering the casual nature of the construction inside Psar Chaa) with a fried egg over rice noodles, scallions, and bean sprouts, with fish sauce (1,500 riels). Judging by my plate's bunny-and-mushroom motif, I might have been sitting in the kids' section; not long after, I followed the younger crowd to the dessert station for an iced treat (2,000 riels).
Psar Chaa
Siem Reap, Cambodia
(From a November 2006 visit)
