Suzanne: Meet Sihanoukville

Photo Gallery: Cambodia Water Festival 2013 Pt 5

This one’s short, and its only purpose is to show how thorough I can be. The following sequence of pictures are from the ride back to Phnom Penh, through Chuhn, and featuring the exploration of a Khmer picnic via roasted duck. Yum! A fantastic end to an exhausting period of travel and relaxation. Unfortunately, though, I forgot to take any pictures of the duck feast, and all you get to see is the Kampot Market, where we went to buy some pepper:

Photo Gallery: Cambodia Water Festival 2013 Pt 4

While it’s small and the paths are fairly straight and smooth, the Kep National Park offers a quiet and serene backdrop to the quiet and serene life going on within the town. Hiking around its plethora of trails and seeking out views and little landmarks was an adventure and a welcome getaway to the hustle and bustle of, well, life. Let’s first take a look at an extremely long worm, and go from there.

A true “water tower.”

A strange grave:

The “Little Buddha.”

The longest and biggest millipede I’ve ever seen:

Sunset Rock:

Here are some wallpaper shots.

And the nunnery:

Photo Gallery: Cambodia Water Festival 2013 Pt 3

The second day of Kep saw us rushing around the National Park for a few hours, but we also took plenty of time to hang out. And I checked out an abandoned house with some really cool graffiti. And we revisited the crab market. Let’s start with breakfast, though:

 

Ultra-creepy “dungeon”:

 

Crab market:

 

Zap past a couple hours of pool and relaxation and you get happy hour with “Santa Margarita”:

 

Martini:

 

Fast forward again to “Knai Bang Chat”:

 

Night crab fishing:

Photo Gallery: Cambodia Water Festival 2013 Pt 2

After a delightful evening in Kampot, we took the morning to get some food and then head to Kep for day 2 of the 4 day holiday. Before departing Kampot, however, we had to stop by the Durian statue. Here is Penhleak and the Durian Statue:

 

Of course you can see my ridiculous stop motion activity here, which Penhleak took of me.

 

The road to Kep is long and dry:

 

At Spring Valley, our resort in Kep:

 

Yenda trying to get some rest:

 

More experiments with composition:

 

Lounging at the pool:

 

Kakrona chilling out with us:

 

The White Woman of Kep, who is waiting for her man:

 

At the crab market:

Photo Gallery: Cambodia Water Festival 2013 Pt 1

The Cambodia Water Festival is a holiday occurring in Cambodia to mark the end of the rainy season. This year it was cancelled by the government due to lack of funds (and possibly, suspiciously, a drive to keep people from political organization). Despite this depressing news, people still had the time off from work and lots of people used it to travel back to their home villages or go on small holiday trips. The latter was true of me. I and four of my Cambodian friends took a trip to the coast. First we stayed in Kampot, visiting Bokor Mountain, which used to be a center for the elite before the Khmer Rouge. Let’s start, however, with some pictures of breakfast in Phnom Penh:

Our guest house on the Kampot river, “River Lodge”:

In Kampot I got to see my first Asian elephant outside of a zoo:

From Epic Arts Cafe, a Kampot-based restaurant empowering people with hearing disabilities:

The drive to Bokor:

Playing with composition:

Trash can made out of tires:

Grandmother Mao:

Strange animal statues in front of Mao:

Beeuf:

Below is the old French colonial hotel that Sihanouk and other rich Cambodians stayed in. It used to be colored a bright red. The entire place is more like a horror movie than anything else I’ve seen in Cambodia, and might be one of my favorite spaces I’ve visited as well:

A strange church:

The storm and the drive back down:

Durian Statue GIF Portrait – Kampot, Cambodia

Or here.

Courtesy of Penhleak.

Photo Gallery: Siem Reap Revisited, Part 3

What follows in the third and final section of this long photo gallery is the cultural festival itself, the reason I went to the town to begin with. As I’m not an expert on local customs and culture, I hesitate to describe what you’ll see below. Just imagine representatives from all over the country coming to Siem Reap to share their art with other Cambodians. Imagine me being one of only a couple outsider-types looking in. There were storms both night, too, and I ended up helping the Cambodians keep their tent up when it was pushed down by rain on the first night. The second night, though you won’t see a picture of me in the crowd, I was able to dance with all the young Cambodians at the end of the event, before it, again, rained. I wasn’t originally going to post these, but EWMI never got around to throwing them up on their own, so here they are.

Me and some garment factory workers living/working in Phnom Penh:

A lot of the locals came out to check and see what was going on:

It’s a smoke machine:

Photo Gallery: Siem Reap Revisited, Part 2

The second of the three parts of this photo gallery adventure involve personal time spent during my adventure in Siem Reap. You’ll notice the familiar street scenes, and some shots of new friends I’ve made in the area.

Pub Street in the Morning:

Wat Damnack:

This tuk tuk driver is also a poet. His name is Prakchhim.

Sreyleak, Bongthom, and little Nathale:

Holding the abping, or tarantula, in Skuon:

Photo Gallery: Siem Reap Revisited, Part 1

I had the pleasure last week of going back to Siem Reap with folks from East-West Management Institute (EWMI), the NGO that “owns” the project I’m working on  for my internship. The experience was quite thrilling, as I specifically attended the annual National Community Media Cultural Competition (the name is slightly different, but I have no documentation to clarify for myself or for you, unfortunately). This celebration, which ran over two days in a market area outside of Siem Reap’s center, featured Cambodians from all the provinces. Songs were sung, poems read, dances danced, plays acted out, and so on and so forth. And I was one of the only foreigners there. In this three part photo gallery series, I show you the adventure. It starts, below, with the drive to Siem Reap, which was in a car, through Kampong Cham and Kampong Thom, and featured streets scenes, a sunset, and some other goodies. First we start with Phnom Penh:

 

Kandal and Kampong Cham:

 

Kampong Thom:

 

Siem Reap: