The Cambodian town where crab is king

[geovalin]

Ray Wilson’s obsession with crabs takes him to Kep, or crustacean central.

Dawn is breaking in Kep and the narrow-gutted, green-hulled fishing boats on anchor are pulling at the current in this part of the Gulf of Thailand where the humble crab is king.

In the soft morning light, a young woman trudges methodically from the shore, through knee-deep water, to reach a boat, before returning to the edge of the wharf, lugging a big drawstring bag filled with hundreds of small crabs caught by the fishermen before sunrise.

On the wharf in this small village 150km from Phnom Penh, brightly dressed elderly women with alert eyes join agile young men to help haul up the bags on to the gangplanks at the crab markets before emptying the twitching contents into big plastic baskets.

It becomes apparent that size doesn’t matter in Cambodia, from fisheries inspectors and the crab and seafood merchants whose survival depends solely on selling the small crustaceans to locals, to expatriates down from Phnom Penh for the weekend or to tourists on a pit stop en route to Vietnam or Thailand.

Watching the boats from the jetty at Kep. Picture: Ray Wilson

It’s too early for tourists but the locals begin to barter for a kilo (tourists pay about $6.50 - $10.50) or so of crabs and then pay a little more to get them cooked or steamed in big pots accommodated on housing over wooden fires in a sheltered part of the market.

The tourists arrive a little later, by foot or tuk tuk and are invariably met with higher prices than the locals paid an hour or so before. And by this time the crabs, to keep them alive, have been stored in bamboo baskets, similar in size to a crayfish pot, in shallow water just offshore.

But nobody seems to mind about the size or the price, as visitors hoe into mounds of the small crustaceans at plastic tables in the markets where good-sized prawns, squid and fish are also available from the barbecues.

Later on, usually around a superb sunset turned orange and red by the pollution and haze on the horizon, the row of 30 nearby shanty restaurants, which back into the sea on stilts, all boast the signature dish of the region — crabs stir-fried with strands of green peppercorns. This is a local delicacy with the green peppercorns lauded the world over as a sweetly pungent spice. To my palate there were some definite eucalyptus overtones.

read more https://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/travel/a/31225100/the-cambodian-town-where-crab-is-king/

[kayo]

Nice Read man,

.

from Kampot, working in the local Pepper industry