Smokin' Pot and the Circus

Let's clear this up first: The Smokin'Pot is a restaurant/cooking school in Battambang where the three of us took a half day cooking course.

The morning began with a trip to the market to buy the ingredients. The class was 8 people with one instructor who walked us through the market showing us herbs, produce and meats/fish we'd never seen before. It was really nice to learn about some of the things we'd been seeing all over Cambodia. We watched our fish be de-headed, tailed, scaled and, while still wiggling, put in a plastic bag for transport to our woks.
Back to the cooking school for Khmer curry made with coconut milk that we squeezed ourselves and curry past we mashed ourselves in stone mortars. After that was a spicy salad, similar to a coleslaw with lots of chillies. After that was the spicy beef with basil. I boldly added the authentic (more like masochistic) 10 chillies. Let's just say that my mouth and lips hurt for several hours but it was still a delicious meal and a very fun way to spend a morning.

In the evening, we decided to go to a performance we'd seen several fliers for. It was some kind of fine arts school circus show and art exhibit. The kids (13-20 years old) were fantastic and completely charming with a mix of acrobatics, juggling, contortionists, unicycling and a grand finale of tumbling through hoops of fire! The whole show was accompanied by the music students on a combination of traditional and non-traditional Khmer instruments. The art exhibit was equally fantastic with many watercolors and pen and ink drawings for sale, one of which I bought for myself.