Trying KAMPOT PEPPER CRAB for the First Time at Kep Beach 🦀 🇰🇭 Khmer Food

Man, this is delicious. You're gonna really like this. Good morning, good morning. It is another beautiful day in Cambodia. I can't tell you how much I have loved traveling here. Today is our last day in Kampot, but we're making the most of it. We're going to take the motorbike out 30 minutes to a little town called Khaip. It is known to have a fantastic seafood market, world-class crab, and a pretty good beach. So we're just gonna see how things go today. Don't have a lot planned, but seafood and beach, do you really need anything more? We are like five minutes into this drive and I feel like I've... This is not the scenic drive that I imagined. The first bit of it, they must have just ripped up the road because there are a lot of potholes and it's so dusty. I don't know how Owen's doing, but like my butt hurts. I wanted an adventure today, so I guess we got it. All right, we made it. In advance of coming here, I did read that this is where a lot of tourists go, but I didn't think it would be a big tourist sign. So this is very developed, but I think in Asia, like I think Westerners, when we see something for tourists, we see it as being a bad thing. Like, oh, we don't want to go where tourists go, we want to go where locals go. Whereas I find in Asia, when they talk about like tourist places or tourist hotel, it means like it's a nice place. Oh, she's got rambutan. Oh, they've got rose apple. Is that longan? Oh, and she's got rambutan too that you can buy from her. Now I have also, I just saw a woman, she had durian, which we have not tried, but I'm pretty sure when we were in Phnom Penh, the durian that we saw in the markets was actually from Thailand, so I don't think they're selling local stuff. But here's some more. It definitely looks like it's rambutan season. I don't know who this is, but he's in gold. He has a monument. Unfortunately, not in English, so I don't know. Maybe he's like the protector of fishermen. I had to put my hat on. It is very bright and every day it's been 40 degrees, but I'm just going to say I'm now used to 40 degrees. I think this is 45. It's very, very hot. Oh, I've got lots of seafood, condiments, more clothes that actually look really cute. I'm tempted, but I don't need any more of this kind of stuff. Let me explain to you how I think this place works. So as I understand it, you come here, you can buy whatever you want. You do negotiate the price. So I think here it's not the same level of negotiating a price. Like say in Thailand, you don't negotiate really hard, but the first price is not the price. So you're supposed to negotiate a lower price. We'll see how that goes. And then from what I've heard, once you buy it, you pick it out to get the best things, if you know. Otherwise, they'll just give you whatever. And then if you want, you can ask them to cook it or find someone who will cook it for you. And I think it's about $2.50. So I'm going to take a look at what it's like, where to eat. If it's too hot, we'll take it with us to the beach. Alan got some sugar cane juice. The thing I hate about this place, not this place specifically, but just drinks is plastic cup, plastic top, plastic straw. And then they give you a plastic bag to carry it in. But that's what people want. People want that. I did get a water bottle, so I guess I'm not that much better. All right, it's time to go inside. I did want to say that someone came over and tried to sell us rambutan, but it was not bright red. So just to let you know, I love rambutan. It's like that spiky hair kind of red fruit. But once you pick it, it no longer ripens. So it's not like you can buy an unripe one and it gets better. So you always have to pick the bright red ones that look fresh, not dried out. The woman actually had some dried ones, which are not great. Ah, rambutan. One kilo, how much? One kilo, two dollars? All right, this woman's smart. She gave me one. It's good. Okay, one kilo. What you want to do though is make sure they pick the good ones. Because you can see like this yellow one, I don't like. But these bright red ones are good. Only the honest woman, she's showing us the scale. One kilo, one kilo, two dollars. That woman was so sweet and she's smart because she knew once I tried one, I would know that they were good. And she also, for the most part, picked out all the yellow ones and gave me the red ones. How much for one kilo? Seven dollars. So one kilo is how many? One kilo, nine crab, one kilo. Nine crab for one kilo. Is that your best price? Or maybe a little bit less? That's your best price? Okay, that's a good deal. Okay, yeah. Yeah, okay. So she is honest. Again, she shows us the scale. Nine dollars is 36. 36? We'll eat, we'll take it with us. But thank you. It looks so good. So this looks fantastic. In the end, it cost us nine. Probably could have gotten it for less. But I think the right price is the one that you're willing to pay. And we were willing to pay nine to have everything taken care of. So it looks and smells amazing. But it's so hot at this market that we're going to go take it to the beach. So we'll get some breeze. And then also, I think they have some cabanas there. So I've seen. But I would suggest coming here early. And then I'm going to give you my thoughts just on the seafood. Because I've never bought crab before. But I saw a lot of the other seafood. I come from a seafood region in Canada. So some things I thought were really good and some things I would not touch. But let's talk about that while we're eating. This is a really great beach time. It's a really great time to have lunch. Have a beach lunch. And have this crab, which looks so good. And I think the beach is only three minutes away. I'm not exactly sure how much parking costs. But I think it's pretty fair. Because Alan gave her the equivalent of 20 cents. And she took it along with the ticket. So I'm not sure if it's... I think what it is actually is it's a timed parking. So we were not in very long at all. And that's because it was like really crazy. Once you get in there. If you just want to look around, it's very difficult. Because everybody's kind of in your face. Trying to get you to look at their ware. Especially the crab sellers. And I noticed a lot of the local people who come in. They're almost very dismissive. I couldn't do that. I liked the first person that came up to us. So I was like, okay, let's just buy from her. In the end, actually, I'm really happy with the decision. We'll see once we eat it. But she was a very nice person. So I feel like at least we bought from someone nice. All right, we found a spot. So a lot of how this works here is basically they have these little cabanas. Like a cabana where you can sit. And they have little hammocks for when you want to sleep. So we made it to our spot. Now, I knew that they had cabanas along the beach. But I wasn't quite sure how it worked. I knew that they were more Asian style. Where people like to sit, let's say, hand style. They like to sit down. And then they also had hammocks. So there were some across the street. We kept driving. And we found this little spot that is right on the beach, which is fantastic. And I was wondering, oh, how much is this going to cost? Because it looks like it's a premium cabana. So the man said to us, two people, you'll stay here, five dollars. So we can stay here five dollars for the day. He did say it's not consumable. So we do have to pay for our drinks and everything. But the nice thing about it is we have this whole, let me turn it around, this whole thing to ourselves. So this actually is pretty comfortable. And then we've got two hammocks facing out. But the other thing, which is key, Alan's going to love, is it has a fan. Now we have this whole thing to ourselves for the whole afternoon just to relax, explore. It's very hot out right now. So I'm not going to go on this beach. I mean, you can see people. Not the best beach, but still a nice beach. Then at the end, there's this woman. And I think it is a statue of Ye Mao. I think I'm pronouncing her name wrong. The same statue that I visited in the Bokor National Park. She's a national heroine, which is the most important thing. But I want to get in to this crab because it smells so good. The place that we're staying doesn't have big water. And so I know we are both very thirsty. We're probably going to need more than one of these. But I realized also that you don't really have to go very far to get food. So kids have come up to us to sell some fruit. There are lots of fruit vendors here, mango salad vendors. There's just a lot of places to eat serving traditional food. If you want Western food, they do. I think I saw a formal restaurant that probably has it. But that is not our bag. We are here to have some local seafood and try some local food that we have here. Okay. Hello, how are you? So when I came back from getting water, Alan was already asleep. And I thought, oh, let me just sit in this hammock. And it's been actually at least an hour later. I've just been laying here watching people play in the sun. It has been so nice. The key to enjoying the beach here in Cambodia is definitely these cabanas where you can just sit in the shade but still have the experience, the sound of the beach without getting burnt. I am loving it. Although I am like, when is Alan going to wake up? Because I want to try this crab. And I know he would say to me, you should just try it without me. But I feel like we have to have this experience together. Alan, me, and of course, you. All right, look who's up. How are you feeling after that long nap? Hot. I will say this. It is very humid here. And so even if you don't feel like drinking water, you really do need to drink a lot of water. So everybody here has gotten crab so far. I see all these people around me, all these families just sitting in a circle munching on crab. They've been eating it straight up plain, but we did want to get it in the camp hot pepper just because like that's the flavor of here. And when you have pepper here, it totally changes your mind about pepper. It's not just like a straight up black pepper taste, but it's kind of like citrusy, has a little bit of fragrance and then has some spice. The funny thing is, it's still warm. So they did put it in a leaf and we've got, this is one kilo. So I come from the east coast of Canada. I prefer lobster over crab. I feel like crab is a lot of work. But this crab is delicious. And I asked her to make it spicy, but not too spicy. And so you can taste the pepper, but it's not burning. I don't know what the red sauce was. They put on afterwards, but man, this is delicious. You're going to really like this. So basically what they do is they cut it in half, cook it in peppercorn, garlic, a bunch of other sauce. It's delicious. It's not too spicy, just a hit of pepper. So fragrant. I always said before that I didn't really like crab. Didn't think it was worth it. Took too much time to get in. But this, this is worth it. You definitely have to have this when you come to Cambodia and like coming here, eating it at the water, this is like the best place. I loved it today. Other people have Sunday Funday. This is Monday Funday for me. Oh my, the waves have gotten high. I don't know if we're going to be able to go swimming. Look at this. It's very windy out. The kids are still in it, but I don't know about us. This is definitely not a good day for swimming. Good thing we've got those hammocks. But I did want to talk about going to the market. Now, the reason why I chose that first vendor was not only because she was nice, but she was very nice. One of the things that I was looking for was someone who was keeping the crab in a tub that had like circulating cold water, which she had. I really liked that she showed us the crabs that were female and she broke it open to show us the roe, which I thought was fantastic. I like the roe and I like female crabs because they're bigger, but not everybody likes that. And I just thought the way that they cooked it in front of you and they also weighed it in front of you. She had the scale at zero, put the bag on to show us that we had gotten a kilogram. So overall, I thought she was a great vendor. Is that the best price? Nine? I don't know. It's the best. I think a fair price is the price you're willing to pay. And so that was the price that we were willing to pay. So that was great. Now, in terms of what to eat at the market, there are some things that I would not eat if I didn't go first thing in the morning. So in a fish market, you always want to go first thing in the morning, but we arrived at 12. So that fish had probably been there since four or five, which is fine for a lot of things. You could get the cooked fish, the squid, all of that is fine. The one thing I won't eat at a market if I'm not there first thing is oyster. They had fantastic looking oysters, but they were not on ice. And it looked, in fact, some of them were in cellophane. It looked like they'd been there for a couple of hours. I just, I would not take my chance on that. I am willing to pretty much eat anything around the world, except oysters that have been sitting around. Because if you get a shellfish allergy, if you get sick from shellfish, it's like the worst kind of sick. I've never had it because I don't take those chances. But I do know it's one of the worst things you could have. Anyway, I would just say this has been a fantastic day. I have just really enjoyed it. Oh my God, there's a giant monkey. Guys, I've got a story about this monkey. When I came back from flying the drone, that monkey was eating my rambutan and sitting next to Alan. I don't want to get too close because, you know, I'm scared of them. This guy right here. I'm going to end this video here. In the next video, we're not going to be in Cambodia. I'm so sad to be gone, but we're going to come back. I really want to see more of Cambodia. I think it's definitely the most underrated country. I know I thought Laos was, but I think Cambodia might be the most underrated because there's so much to do here. The people are fantastic. I love it. I really love it here. So if you have suggestions on where to go, let me know. And in the next video, I'm going to be in a new country and it's not going to be 40 degrees. I hope it's going to be 27. See you then.