I'm pretty sure I have eaten sugar palm in lots of foods but I had just never seen the sugar palm trees or understood how the sugar came about from the trees. In Khmer they are thnôt. Thnôt symbolize the birth of the Khmer soul, I was told, because they began to grow from the very same moment the first Khmer walked in Cambodia.

In Cambodia the sugar palm tree is part of the national heritage. Most Cambodians use the sugar palm trees in traditional ways. Farmers delicately ascend the trunks, cut the buds and harvest the juice from the trees flowers. The entire tree has many uses. Thnôt can be made into mats and rice containers while the fruit can be eaten fresh or made into many kinds of delicious desserts. The texture is something like a lychee (crunch jello), while the flavor is mildly sweet… something like a sweet water chestnut in flavor. You can make traditional beer with the juice or drink it as it is, or you can make it into palm sugar. Baskets and bridles for the cows are made from the bark. Kitchen implements, some furniture and crafts are made from the trunk.

I bought a couple of cylinders of sugar palm artistically wrapped in palm leaves from a local stand miles away from the village designed mainly for tourists. I'm not exactly sure how much they cost but I gave the lady $10. She took me to the side of her wooden bamboo house and showed me a giant steel bowl over fire from a clay oven with boiling sugar syrup inside. There were naked kids running around too. Way to go green Cambodian :-) I was dead tired to take anymore pictures. I was having a serious case of jet lag and all I was thinking about was to drop my camera bag anywhere and treat myself to a nice long nap. This trip was definitely not for the faint of heart. It definitely felt like resting for 1/2 a person but spending the energy for 2 or more.

Siem Reap 4/10/13