One of the major temples in Siem Reap is the Wat Damnak pagoda. It is located on the left bank of the river, just to the right of the roundabout. The main entrance is also from this side, but there is also an opposite entrance. Wat Damnak is also often called the district, many restaurants and shops give as description to be near Wat Damnak.

Famous library with 10.000 books

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The pagoda itself was once part of the royal palace under King Sisowath. “Damnak” means palace in Khmer. Today, on the site next to the pagoda itself, a library, a school, a crematorium and housing for nuns are housed. The latter two are on the other side of the small road that separates the temple on the back.

It is said that some of the buildings are over 100 years old, others have been built in recent years. In the time of the Khmer Rouge the terrain was used as a weapon depot. The most important and well-known building is just to the right of the entrance: The Center for Khmer Studies and its attached library. Almost every pupil and student will have learned here once in their lifetime. The Center for Khmer Studies is a non-governmental organization supported by international foundations, educational institutions, scientists, the US Department of Education and interested individuals and philanthropists from the US, France and Cambodia.

The library was founded in 2010 and is the largest facility outside of Phnom Penh. Supposedly 15,000 titles are housed here. They are divided into books, encyclopedias, directories, maps, guides and daily newspapers in English, French and Khmer. Most of the works revolve around topics such as archeology, sociology, art and economics. The staff here are almost all trilingual and have received training at the University of California at Berkeley.
The library is open from 8.30 am to 12 noon and from 1.30 to 5.15 pm and closed on Sundays.
 

Important events in Wat Damnak

Wat Damnak is also one of the major temples for the preservation of urns, especially for wealthy citizens. One can see on Pchum Ben how expensive cars drive up and sacrifices are made at the small stupas where the urns stand. If you like something, you can also order three monks for the ceremony. A luxury stupa costs up to $ 5,000. Even the funerals of important people are held here, with several hundred visitors. If you go east through the temple complex, you will come to the crematorium. There, according to the Buddhist custom, people are burned and the ashes are handed over to the bereaved. To the right of the crematorium, the nuns live. Although there are actually no female monks, but you can find in almost every pagoda even old women, who are dressed in white and help out in the pagoda. They often prepare the food for the monks, clean and help out at festivals.
 

Many restaurants in the area

Wat Damnak has also made a name for itself as a neighborhood for some restaurants. The best known is the cuisine Wat Damnak, an upscale restaurant. Just a few meters from the nunnery is a small market that has some goodies to offer. At a stand you can buy similar dishes as our host Hong Genlai offers in their restaurant. If you ever want to know how such a street restaurant works, you can book an experience in the morning and help cook your own meals. If you need a good pharmacy in Siem Reap, you can find the Kravvan Pharmacy at Wat Damnak. The owner speaks very good English and knows very well.

A small restaurant just around the corner is Little Kroma, where you can eat cheap Cambodian dishes. Restaurant Haven is also close by, offering not only young Cambodians a good education, but also tasty local and international cuisine. If you want it easy, tasty and cheap then we recommend the restaurant The Christa. The owner Rak and his family run the business with a lot of passion and it has become one of our regular restaurants.

An insider tip is the sandwich-filled sandwiches that are sold not far from the main entrance to Wat Damnak, opposite the Khmer Grill Restaurant. There are two stalls facing each other, the prices and the ingredients are the same, you can also tell how spicy (in Khmer “huel”) you want it to be.

How to get to Wat Damnak 

You can walk to the Wat Damnak Temple from the city center, if your hotel is a little further north, you can rent a bike or catch a tuktuk or rikshaw. There are two apps, Passapp and Grab, with which you can order these and then have a fixed price.

We will be joining the Digital Cambodia 2019 event in Phnom Penh from 15.3.-17.3. It is called the biggest digital event in Cambodia this year and will take place at Diamond Island Exhibition Hall.

Digital Cambodia conference 2019

You can find us in the Start-Up section. More than 100 companies will be there, on stage you can listen to more than 100 speakers. We will be there mainly for networking and displaying our platform.

We are also looking for:

1 part time fullstack developer with ruby on rails and bootstrap experience

1 freelance accountant

Please drop us a message on m.me/dinewiththelocals or email at feedme@dinewiththelocals.com

Part of our mission is to provide additional income for women and families in Cambodia by connecting them with travelers through food experiences. While this income is important, the safety and wellbeing of our hosts is even more important. We set up strict rules to ensure our hosts are safe.

Trainings

We train our hosts in role plays to get them a better understanding of the needs travelers have.

We train our hosts regularly in:

• Hospitality

• Food safety

• Personal income

In the hospitality training they learn how to greet and welcome guests, giving basic introduction about facilities (like where is the toilet), explaining food and how to eat it and share their own experiences with them. In role plays we help them to get comfortable with foreign guests.

The food safety focuses mainly on the food preparation, storage and presentation. Our hosts do not run a restaurants, it’s home cooking, but we make sure that basic food safety rules are applied. All vegetables are washed and cleaned, all meat is properly heated. Prepared food is covered, dishes and plates are properly cleaned. Hand washing is also ensured.

We also give advice to personal income. A big problem in Cambodia is the lack of savings and increasing loans. We explain hosts and families how to save money and bring personal finances in order.

Never alone

Our hosts will never be alone at home when they receive guests. We ensure that at least one additional adult form their family is with them, or one of our statt members will be there. In most cases, our hosts are living with their extended family, so they are not alone.

Check in and out

Our hosts are asked to checkin with us when the guests arrive, after 30 minutes and when the check out. This is to ensure that guests found the place, enjoying the experience, but also that the hosts are feeling well.

Children policy

Since mosts hosts are families with children, they will be on the premise, may help in the kitchen and join the meal, but that is entirely up to the family. Children are under strict supervision of the parents. At no time guests will be alone with children.

Pictures

Our hosts will take a picture of the guests as proof of service, but also for basic safety reasons. Guests can take pictures of hosts and family if they consent. Asia is a region where it is common to take selfies and pictures and we honor this.

When we started Dine With The Locals, one reason was to make access to many choices of food experience in Cambodia as easy as possible. For now, travelers have to check several websites from different tour operators. Every has his own food tour, works with a certain home or family and also many have usually the same kind of food. Even cooking classes provide the common dishes.

That‘s why we decided to offer choices for food experience in Cambodia on a platform. This ensures a lot of variety of places, dishes, places and people. It is also more easy for travelers to choose and book. Just browse through our growing lists of hosts (or select a city first) and the explore the diversity of Khmer food and environments as well as Cambodian people.

Our Team with Mom and her daughter, a host in Siem Reap for Dine With The Locals.

Best food experience in Cambodia

Getting in touch with locals is sometimes an challenge: You can‘t just walk into a people‘s house or yard (even if many will greet and invite you, Cambodians are very friendly). We bring you together with people and places you usually would never meet. Our platform is open to every Cambodian family who want to get connected to tourists and travelers, wants to promote Cambodian food and lifestyle.

Our host Mom and her family members harvesting morning glory from the field behind her house and cook it as part of your food experience in Cambodia.

Food in Cambodia is the best when make at home, because it will be fresh the ingredients are from the market and ready made for you. While street food has to be prepared in advance and cheap, its usually not a good way to try locals cuisine. When you want to have a real food experience in Cambodia, then better dine with the locals. They will pick the leaves from the trees in the garden to make Amok, fry morning glory just cut moments ago in the field and let you also watch, how they prepare the food.

We are the first platform on South East Asia to enable locals to be part of the tourism industry without any investments. Their capital is passion, and our booking process make it easy and fast to have a food experience in Cambodia you will never forget.

In their blog Entrepid Travel ( mentioned the top trends in Travel for 2018. One of those trends was “ADVENTURE TRAVEL WILL CATER TO EXPERIENCES. “

It looks like people are done with taking pictures from a cliff or making it to the base camp. A study made by the ATTA found out that “Risky adrenaline activities are favored 45% less than “experiencing a new culture” in the definition of adventure travel”. Thats means local food in a Khmer house in Siem Reap, for example.

Our Host Sareth.

Experiences are everywhere now, even Booking  and Tripadvisor are promoting now Things To do. But where to find those experiences? Tour companies rely on the expertise of their product managers and the DMC in the countries. Their dilemma is that customers want the classics like a local restaurant in Phnom Penh, plus safety, and then go off the beaten track and – as usual – don’t want to see other tourists.

More than a food tour in Siem Reap

What we (and others) do is connect travelers directly with those experiences. We do it through food, other through home stay or activities. But we don’t follow old models like a food tour in Siem Reap. We try a new approach, giving the customer more choices. Our advantage is that we can handpick our hosts, look for quality rather than quantity and provide something special. As a traveler, you don’t (usually) have access to a local home. Unless your tour guide made a deal with neighbors or brings you to his home.

We go even further: No guide needed. Authentic means to deal with what you see and have. Every solo traveler will tell you the best thing was, that he was forced to be engaged with locals in different ways, because language wasn’t a tool.

Although some of our hosts speak some English, the most fun comes when spoken language has to be replaced by body language. Then you connect, and then you have what we call an authentic local experience.

Khmer food isn’t as well known as the Thai food is, but that doesn’t mean it is not as good as what the neighbors have to offer. Many European and American travelers like the Khmer food, because it is not so spicy and has always some sweetness. We asked around what the most popular Khmer foods are, and from what we got, made this list of Top 5 Cambodian dishes.

Beef Lok Lak

The most famous Cambodian dish is beef lol lak, and its on the menu at Dine With The Locals as well.

You will find this dish in nearly every restaurant, for tourists and Khmer likewise. It is not so popular in home cooking mainly because beef is expensive for the average household. Our host Srey Moch put it on the menu, because she learned from her mom how to cook the beef pieces properly and add the right sauce made from lemon, salt and pepper. Khmer Lok Lak is on the too when people as what to eat in Cambodia.

Fish Amok

Amok can be prepared with fish, beef or chicken, even tofu. It’s the most tasty and unique Khmer food dish.

The most tasty and unique Khmer food is probably the Fish Amok. It can be done with beef, chicken, pork or tofu as well. It has coconut milk in it, but most importantly the leaves or a tree that is not found everywhere in Cambodia. Our host Smey not only makes a delicious Fish Amok, she also shows you where to get the ingredients from.

Samlor Kor Ko

Samlor Kor ko can be made with chicken, beef, fish or pork. The secret is the roasted rice.

Samlor means soup in Khmer, and those soups can have verious ingredients. Some actually look more like a curry (Samlor Ktis) while others are more a clear soup. Kor Ko is between, and it is cooked with vegetables, fish, chicken or beef and powder from roasted rice. You need also a paste made of herbs and spices, called Kreung, for it. Our hosts Mom and Sam knows well ho to cook it, because they learned from their mothers and grandmothers. It is eaten with rice on the side.

Fried chicken with lemongrass

Fried Chicken with lemongras is a famous dish in Cambodia and available at the hosts of Dine With The Locals

You would usually find lemongrass in curries and soups, but it’s also a great herb to be used for frying. Chicken is marinated in spices and then fried together with lemongrass and kaffir lime leaves. While it is commonly made with chicken, variations can be made with pork or fish, as well as tofu. At Dine With The Locals it is on the menu of our host Vannarith, a mother of two girls who stays with her husband in a house in the forest surrounding Angkor Wat.

Fried fish with soybeans and ginger

Chicken with ginger and soy beans is popular and considered a healthy dish. Our Host Nue Thai will prepare it for guests at Dine With The Locals.

There is never a thing like a pure food from one country. Like fish amok is influenced by Thai and Indian cuisine, the fried fish with soy bean and ginger is more influenced by the Chinese way of cooking. It is considered a healthy dish and can be made with chicken or tofu as well. Our hosts Nue Thai loves to cook it for her family as well as for guests.

If you are looking for a local food experience in Siem Reap off the beaten track, have a look at our selection of hosts. You will have an unforgettable time with Khmer families, exclusive and for a reasonable price.

We are now starting to distribute flyers, in Siem Reap and in Phnom Penh. To do this we are thankful for those shops, restaurants, bars and institutions who allow us to promote DINE WITH THE LOCALS. Please pay a visit to those places when in town. More coming soon.

Our flyers on display in Phnom Penh

If you want to support us with displaying flyers, please send an email or contact us on FB messenger.

SIEM REAP

La Bruschetta

BioLab

Noir De La Paix

Miss Wong

Cyclo Hotel

PHNOM PENH

Toul Sleng Genocide Museum

The Coffee Store

We are passionate travelers, and what we enjoy the most is to get in contact with locals when we explore new countries and regions. Nothing tells you more about the way people live and feel than spending some time with them.

These days authentic experience is a new trend in tourism, but too many times it implemented halfhearted. Homestays are becoming 3 star hotel rooms and cooking classes are set up in a way that might pleasing the guests, but is far from the way locals actually prepare their meals.

When tourists asked us about good local food in Siem Reap, we knew some nice restaurants, but most serving the same food, and we also felt, that tourists want a local experience in Siem Reap.

We decided to go back to what authentic means: the way people live everyday, cook everyday and work everyday. We want connect travelers with locals, and having a meal together is a easy way to get connected.

Even when we call them hosts, their job is not to prepare a meal for you and serve it, but to show local hospitality and spend time together. Experience is not a one way thing.

Authentic experience is a journey without expectations, full of positive surprises, new memories, a feast for all senses. Give one of our hosts a try, when you are in Cambodia.