“Every time I catch cockroaches on the street, people stop to watch me and ask what I’m doing. I tell them that I sell them for $10 a kilo – and that there is one special restaurant in Phnom Penh that buys them,” says Phok Dorn, a 27-year-old fisherman who recently started a fishing tour business here.
Dorn is joking, as he adds with a mischievous smile: “And they believe me! They want to know where this restaurant is!”
Luckily, he doesn’t sell the sewer-dwelling insects to local eateries, but uses them as bait for fishing. Armed with a flashlight and an empty Coca-Cola bottle (with holes cut into it so that the roaches don’t suffocate until the next day’s fishing trip) in his left hand and a plastic glove on his right, it doesn’t take him more than a half hour to gather 20 or 30 critters on the dark street outside his house.
That’s enough cockroaches to supply the 15 expats Dorn brings on his weekend fishing trips. The idea for the trip started with a blog. The more Dorn wrote about his fish-related experiences online – such as the times when he found a secret message in a bottle and saved a homeless turtle from someone’s dinner plate – the more he heard from friends who wanted to come along on his fishing adventures. So why not start a fishing tour business? When the first customer called, Dorn was so excited he couldn’t eat his lunch.
From a family of 10 children in one of the poorest parts of Cambodia, Dorn taught himself to fish when he was seven years old – after making his own fishing rods from bamboo – because he didn’t like eating plain rice with salt for dinner. Nowadays he is busy learning other things – like how to say ‘piranha’ in English and memorising interesting facts from the Phnom Penh Wikipedia page, which he has printed out for reference.
Dorn’s fishing tour starts with a brief introduction to the Mekong River, with stories about the city’s recent history and a photo stop near the house that looks like it’s about to fall into the river. The tour concludes at sunset with a Cambodian meal of grilled fish (purchased the night before at the local market) with green mango salad and pepper sauce – all of which Dorn makes himself.
When he isn’t catching cockroaches, watching fishing shows on the Discovery Channel or blogging, he might be busy hunting frogs and crab or digging for earthworms. Or he might be travelling around Cambodia, with a single purpose in mind – to find that secret river containing the most fish.
The tour, which includes dinner and drinks, costs $14 for adults and $7 for children. The optional cockroach hunt, the night before the fishing trip, is $1 per person. Find out more at fishinginphnompenh.wordpress.com and facebook.com/fishingboattours or contact Dorn at fishingboattrip@nullyahoo.com.
WHO: Aspiring anglers
WHAT: Fishing tours
WHERE: The Tonle Sap
WHEN: 3:30pm – 6:30pm every Saturday and Sunday
WHY: ‘The gods do not deduct from man’s allotted span the hours spent in fishing.’ – Babylonian proverb