(Daniel) I suffered that breakfast again today, nearly allowing my myself to say something to the attendant, who exercised his positions only power by demanding to know my room number.  I kept my cool though and ate the tepid leftovers before returning to the room and sorting out some photos for the diary.

Nii had been reading the Lonely planet guide that I picked up in Siem Reap.  Apparently there is a go-cart track just outside town, which having never experienced the pleasure of racing a go-cart, she asked if we could visit.  My only activity that I had scheduled for today was to try and find a special food that I wanted to make a video of myself eating, and maybe find a barber to get a haircut.  These two things shouldn’t take long, and I have always loved carting myself, so I agreed.

We jumped in the Wolf and drove out following the map to the road toward the track.  It occurred to me several times that our guide book is two years out of date, but I figured that the attraction would only be doing better business with the influx of tourists.  After an hour of searching I started to doubt my logic!  We asked several people, but no-one spoke English, Thai or French.  At a roadside restaurant, I pulled up and we sat down to order some food for lunch, the people inside couldn’t help either, in fact the food order itself was a real struggle. I wondered what the wild East of Cambodia would be like when we visit there in a few days time?

After lunch we had to give up, returning to Phnom Penh.  We parked up at the Hotel again, and walked out to the market.  The market itself although not the main one in the City was pretty big and had everything from fish and meats to tools and clothing.  We wandered around taking photos and avoiding the eyes of beggars and small children looking for money.  I do occasionally give money to the ones who really look like they need help, but I can’t agree that begging on the street like this is the answer to these peoples problems.  My thoughts are that by giving money to them we are compounding the problem, in other words by giving the little money which we do, we stop them from looking to the authorities for help, which eventually they will have to.

After about and hour searching the market I found what I was looking for.  A food which is popular all over Cambodia, but the locals knowing that foreigners find it quite repulsive are hesitant to let outsiders see or buy the delicacy.  I know the food as hatchling egg, this is the partly developed fertilized egg of a duck.  The Chick inside is a few weeks old and almost fully developed.  They cook the eggs over a BBQ and eat them as we would have a breakfast egg.  Feathers, bones, beak, organs and all are crunched up with a light smattering of pepper, lemon and MSG.  Through my travels and especially on the Expedition I have eaten some pretty strange stuff.  Including sheep’s head, eyes, brain, testicles and tongue, chicken balls, brains and intestines, bugs of every description including cockroaches, huge grubs and cicadas.  I have eaten snake and other raw meats that would have health experts reaching for buckets everywhere!  But in all my travels and all my experiences, this is the food which I struggle with in my mind.

Here at a stall by the side of the street was a BBQ filled with eggs, I could see the dark spots around the egg showing that a chick, rather than yolk and white, was inside.   The people were very offish at first, refusing to acknowledge me as I stood there, but with a lot of smiling and patience I soon had the staff smiling and laughing as they served me five of the eggs priced at 25 cents each.  I asked one of the ladies to show me how to eat the egg, of course I didn’t want to cause offence by messing it up!  She cracked open the shell as you would a breakfast egg, but inside a dark and hairy bundle steamed with yellow liquid oozing out from somewhere.

I suddenly felt a bit worried.  I have always been able to eat crazy food, allowing logic to overcome preconception, but this is the one dish that I flat refused to eat.  My thoughts now were creeping in making me feel the familiar bite of bile at the back of my throat.  I scooped out a large yellow lump covered in veins and put it in my mouth.  The taste was not unpleasant, but the texture made my mind race in the centre some crunchy bits almost pushed me over the edge but I managed to swallow the first bite without incident.   The second scoop was a different story.  The body of the animal was well formed and came out in a big hairy lump that looked like a drowned mouse.  I paused for a while, aware that next to me Nii had the video rolling.  Then opened my mouth and took the whole thing in one, a burst of textures made me retch inside, in an effort not to lose it, I took some leaves from the table and ate them with the mouthful. After what seemed like an eternity of chewing and crunching I managed to swallow down the meal.  I thanked the staff and paid a bit extra for the inconvenience then walked with Nii to a bar up the road to wash down the hairy parcel with some beer.  Check out the video below of me eating the hatchling, it's quite long, but worth the wait!

One thing about Phnom Penh that I have failed to illustrate, is the huge number of hawkers and beggars on the street.  Far worse and more in number than these however are the tuc tuc drivers, who constantly approach and pester us everywhere we go.  Not as much as other people I have noticed, but I guess they don’t have a car as an excuse!  After the drink, we went to get a rickshaw home which had us surrounded in seconds by drivers eager to get the fare.  Of course I was offering too little money for them, and so the interest started to wane, but suddenly I saw the bicycle rickshaw driver from last night.  I approached him, still surrounded by a few of the other drivers.  Of course the last thing which I wanted to do was cause trouble, but it was only right that someone should point out that this man had been incredibly rude.  I approached him, and he acted as if nothing had happened.  I told him what he had said, but he pretended not to understand, the other men translated.  I could see that they were talking in support of me, which was unusual.  The man looked sheepish and denied seeing us yesterday, but I remembered his face and rickshaw clearly.  After a few minutes I decided that it wasn’t worth pursuing any further.  We had pointed out to him what he had said, and that we had been offended severely by it and he had understood.  We walked away and took a different rickshaw back to the hotel.

Later on after brushing my teeth several times to get rid of the tiny feathers, Nii and I went out again for dinner.  This time we stayed close to the hotel and ate pizza before returning to the hotel for bed.

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