The temple complexes outside Siem Reap, including legendary Angkor Wat itself, are peppered with souvinir stands and persistent children selling bracelets, cold drinks, t-shirts, scarves, and books. If your explorations of the breathtaking temples, with their intricate bas-reliefs, and the seemingly endless maze of moats, galleries and courtyards, leave you hungry, (and if you are brave enough, and good enough at saying no, to walk past the hawkers' stalls) you can find little restaurants in amongst them, most offering an identical menu of fried rice, noodle soup, and curry. Similar stands, minus the cloud of hawkers, are found in the tourist area of town - the short plastic chairs and tiny tables, packed tightly under tarps and lit with strung-up light bulbs, are a cozy place to slurp down some stir-fried noodles, and they're just down the block from the fancier bars and restaurants offering the same menu for prices five times as high.

The highlight of these little restaurants' identical menus may well be amok, or Khmer fish curry, a distinctive dish of steamed fish in coconut curry served with rice. The amok is flavored with a spice paste called kroeung, unique to Cambodia, that can include lemongrass, kaffir lime, galangal, and wide variety of other spices and herbs, depending on the dish - my details are hazy on this: can anyone recommend a good Cambodian cookbook? The amok was good in every place we ate it, with its rich coconut, tender fish, and bright lemony overtones overshadowing the relatively pedestrian fried rices and noodles we ordered alongside.

Another local specialty that can be found near the temples is palm sugar, which is made on open-air stoves along some of the roadways. The big steaming black bowl and bamboo tubes of palm sap are easily recognizable from the seat of a tuk-tuk (a sort of motorcycle-rickshaw - the most common tourist conveyance here). The sap is squeezed from the flowers of the palm (the sugar, or Palmyra, palm in this case, I believe, although it can also be made from sago or coconut palm sap), and then cooked down until it is ready to be stirred and then placed in little palm-leaf forms, or another container, to harden. Above, in clockwise order, are the male and female palm flowers (which are normally squeezed for their sap without being removed from the tree, so that they may bear fruit), the watery palm sap, the cooked sugar being stirred, and the awaiting leaf forms. The resulting disks have a texture similar to maple sugar candy, and taste like toasted brown sugar with a hint of leafy tartness. We also got to try a spoonful of the hot syrup, which hardened, without the stirring, into a clear amber, becoming carmelly and chewy as it cooled.