Only in Cambodia

It has been a long time since I last posted here, but today I had such an interesting, humorous experience that I thought I needed to share it on this blog.

Neth, Melissa, and I went to a coffee shop/restaurant to do some work this morning. After a couple of hours I decided that I wanted to order lunch and so I walked over the counter and was greeted by two Khmer staff: a young man and woman. I said that I wanted to order lunch and the woman handed me a menu. The man smiled at me and said, "but we don't have pork" (at least that is what I thought he said) and so I smiled back at him and said that I would not order anything with pork in it. I took a minute to scan the menu and I was having difficulty deciding on something and so I asked "what is your most popular dish". They both appeared to not understand my question and so I asked it a different way (a practice I am very much used to - having lived here for 1 1/2 years). So, I asked "what to you sell the most?" This time the man repeated my question as if he understood it, but did not answer. I decided to order Spaghetti. They looked at me and smiled and the man said "yes, spaghetti, but we do not have a cook" (turns out that he never said "pork" - he said "cook").

Only in Cambodia would servers be so kind and accommodating that even though they have no cook and can, therefore, not serve any food - would they: 1) Offer me a menu, 2) Tolerate my questions, and 3) Stand patiently by as I peruse the menu of foods that are not available.

Turns out that this place will be closing the day after tomorrow and so some staff (including the cook) have already been moved to other locations.