63Beds

Waiting for someone - anyone - to come along and make this a better photo in the Bayon.

Sometimes you’re out and about and you see what should be a good photo, if only there was a person in it. Sometimes, you can wait and eventually a person will come along. Sometimes, you’re taking a day off with your wife, touring the temples at Angkor outside Siem Reap, and she’s tired of waiting for you to take pictures of other people. So you leave with what you have. Which is this.

HEADS UP: TRAVEL

I stopped by the arty Siem Reap hotel/restaurant Ombrelle & Kimono today, thinking I’d check it out for a travel newsletter to which I contribute. It was just before the lunch hour, and I entered the open gate. No one was around. I went to the office, “Hello, hello?” No answer. I wandered back around the empty pool and into a guest room, with the door wide open. In fact, all the guest room doors were wide open. And then I noticed a small suitcase—someone had checked into that room.

I returned to the front of the hotel (facing the street, though obscured by a gate and garden) and peeked inside yet another guest room, door open wide. A book sat upon the bedside table and clothes were folded neatly on a shelf. Definitely occupied! And yet I walked right in, straight off the street.

I left, fully unnoticed.

Needless to say, I won’t be recommending that hotel to my readers. A shame, because the singing birds and bright decor made for a lovely little nook in the center of Siem Reap.

We must once again thank our friends Masaru and Yumi Goto for their generosity, hospitality and computer printer.

This is also a chance to get them in our blog, as we show up in theirs whenever we visit Bangkok:

Our good friend and Photographer Guesthouse Co-Owner, Masaru. (click photo for link)

Our Pal and Photographer Guesthouse Co-Owner, Yumi (click photo for link)

Gratuitous blurry Bangkok tuk-tuk photo, taken near their house.

They are also starting a Guesthouse for Photographers. Their Facebook ad:

177/38 GUESTHOUSE for photographers.
It only opens when it’s booked.
No hot water, No A/C except office center.
Free WiFi.

Sounds groovy, yeah? You can get in touch with them directly about how to book a room and how to get there. I’m still not sure where it is, and I’ve been there a few times. Bangkok is funny that way.

Before | After

Got it just before the show opened. Kind of expensive (for Cambodia) at $2.50, but it should last a couple of months, I figure.

Back for your viewing pleasure, another installment of Pointless Photo Monday, where I post a photo completely devoid of content. But I like it anyway.

Traffic jam near Pub Street in Siem Reap, Cambodia.

For all of you who were unable to make it to the opening night of my exhibit, here is a view of the photos on offer at the 4Faces Gallery. Actually, there are four extra here, due to limited wall space at the venue. You can see it on the wall in Siem Reap until February 28. Git on over there!

“Be Unscared: A Glimpse of the Cambodian Spirit World in the Everyday”

This project is a first glimpse into the Cambodian spirit world –  it can never be more than a glimpse, for an outsider.

I have worked as a photojournalist in Cambodia regularly (and irregularly) since 1998. I like to think this gives me a fairly good insight into daily life here, but I also understand that I will never be able to view the Cambodian cosmos as Khmers do. That cosmos is a blend of the ancient Hinduism of Angkor; spirit worship stemming in part from centuries of life hacked from jungles; and Buddhism, particularly its prayers, arcane writing and stories of religious men reborn into better lives.

Visiting foreigners – and those who have lived here for years – know this spirit world exists, but we often miss and misinterpret the common gestures: a bit of graffiti, a monk’s breath, the flames of a candle. This  world holds great appeal to an impoverished population that is poorly connected to the wider world, and unprotected from threats of modern progress.

The title “Be Unscared” comes from a sign at the Temple of the Floating Tree near Phnom Penh, home to a monk with an elephant tusk that people believe cures mental illness. While the sign echoes one of the teachings of the Buddha, it also sums up what Cambodians have wanted for centuries. It’s a call for calm in the face of a dangerous world, whether the danger comes from beasts of the jungle or those next door.

This exhibit is really just the start of a project I intend to work on for the foreseeable future. I really don’t imagine I will see all of the Khmer spirit world any time soon.

On a technical note, the project is done on 35mm color negative film (itself now an arcane medium). The film is past-dated, which made it cheap but that also led to uncontrolled color shifts in the prints. I also had to get re-acquainted with taking photos without an LCD screen on the back of the camera. I had to be unscared, and trust that the images would be as good as I imagined. Sometimes they were – sometimes they weren’t. Sometimes they were better.

It’s kinda nice here in the Kingdom of Cambodia…

A lovely sight after a day of heat.

That’s a $2.50 G&T. With alcohol. Going to bed happy now…

If you’ve visited Bangkok at any time in the last decade or so, you have undoubtedly thought that what the city desperately needs is a little more air pollution. Just a little. Maybe some hand-crafted pollution.

Unattended garbage fire under Din Daeng Expressway.

Karen and I, newly arrived in smog-free Siem Reap, have begun our post-Bangkok ritual of uploading (get it? uploading?) gobs of grey phlegm. This is not something we get to experience in New Mexico.