What to eat in Siem Reap

Khmer cooking is gentler than its neighbours' — less chilli than Thai, more herbal, built on lemongrass, galangal, prahok and kroeung, that yellow spice paste that anchors half the kitchen. You can chase fish amok around the restaurants of Wat Bo for a week and still not really get how it is built. Spend a morning making it yourself, in a local's home, and the whole cuisine clicks into place.

This class runs at around 793,600 VND — roughly thirty-one US dollars — which for a hands-on session with market produce and a real cook is fair. You grind the paste, you fold the fish into coconut, you steam the amok in its banana-leaf cup until it sets like a savoury custard, and then you eat the thing you made. It is the antidote to a Pub Street dinner: quieter, slower, and the kind of afternoon that teaches you what to order for the rest of the trip.

I slot food experiences like this into the dead vertical light — 10am to 3pm, when the sandstone goes flat and harsh and you have no business being out at the temples anyway. It is the perfect use of the hours when a photographer should be indoors, and you walk out of it knowing the difference between amok that was steamed and amok that was lazily stirred in a wok.