We had seen the Happy Painting Shop in Phnom Penh and Rodney had fallen in love with the brightness and happiness of the subjects. So when we wandered into the sister shop in Siem Reap, Rodney was ready to buy. The colourful pictures in our lounge have hung on the wall for 25 years and they are now faded away to wishy-washy pastels. We spent half-an-hour chatting to French Canadian Stéphane Delaprée, the artist, who just happened to be in his shop that day. We talked about his life, his art, retirement, travel, etc. while his assistants were pulling pictures out of folders for us to see. His pictures are all painted on to mulberry-bark paper, mostly in landscape format and the colours are vibrant and sometimes sparkly with cartoon-like subjects. Trouble was, we were finding it hard to find two of the same size in portrait orientation, to replace our old pictures. All of my favourites were the wrong way round.
Finally settling on two that were pretty close in size, Stéphane (yes, we’re on first name terms now) drew two cartoons on the back of each one, which stupidly we forgot to photograph before we sealed the pictures in frames. Never mind it will be a nice surprise when we ever take them out of the frames again.
http://culturelocker.com/story/2012/Cambodia-painter.html
While the assistants rolled our two pictures into cardboard tubes and then wrapped them tightly in bubble wrap for our journey, I asked Stéphane if he could give us a recommendation for dinner. He leapt into action, opened the door, took us across the street, round the corner, down a lane, round another corner, turn right again and “voila”, The Olive. It looked very swanky, with crisp white tablecloths, beautiful lighting and very smart waiters, but he insisted it wasn’t overly expensive and served food that is “tres bon”. So we thanked Stéphane and stepped inside. The seats were soft and comfy, the service was impeccable and after so many ‘hit and miss’ rice and noodle affairs, the food was fantastic. It was French cuisine, but far better than anything we’ve ever eaten in France over the last four years of travelling through there; oh, apart from Nicky’s lovely home cooking in Brittany, of course. Whilst eating our delicious food, I overheard people at the next table saying they would return to the restaurant again and I thought we should do so too. This was good tucker in Cambodia.
Our ‘included evening meal’ at the Park Hyatt on our second night, was not very special at all, and all of the advertised courses were not actually included, hmmm. But the Apsara dancing performance was rather lovely to watch as we ate our bland chicken curry. A far superior meal was a delicious banana-flower salad with chicken sate in a plastic-table- restaurant out at Angkor Wat. We also loved the grilled fish in the restaurant that Rosie and Dennis hotly recommended opposite our hotel back in Chiang Mai. We had a very tasty Laotian chicken curry, prepared, cooked and served by one tired young lady in an open restaurant down a narrow alley in Luang Prabang. But none of these could match our delicious meal at The Olive in Siem Reap. So we did go there again on Saturday evening
