Pakbeng

Eat and meet

Pakbeng

The food in Pakbeng is poor for a town that receives so many tourists every day. Perhaps it's because there will never be any return customers, so there is no incentive to produce quality dishes.

There are two Indian restaurants in town, one good one and one poor one. The one on the main road in the centre of town is the most popular but serves up slop and soggy bread. It fills your stomach, but that's all. The better option for Indian food is up the road to the left when standing at the dock and is called Kopchai Deu. This place is much more like authentic Indian food and the chefs obviously put a bit more effort into their food. Often you'll be enticed inside with a free bottle of lao-lao.

There are quite a number of restaurants all claiming to be bakeries selling such delights as bagels and baguettes but in reality the bagel's a simply airy hamburger bun and the baguette's Asian hotdog buns. Despite this, many of these places do a roaring trade in the morning because there aren't many alternatives.

Rather than have your guesthouse make your lunch order for the next day, it's best to wait until the morning when you have a much bigger range of sellers competing for your business. The prices are better and you can see the ingredients they are using.