Without an H

Photography from south-east Asia by Jon Sanwell

Posts tagged ‘travel’

Phnom Penh street portraits

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Sometimes it’s best to keep things simple.  There’s so much happening on the streets in Phnom Penh, especially compared to the much quieter towns that I’d been visiting previously, that it can be hard to take it all in.  After a few days in the city, I stopped trying to take the definitive Phnom Penh photograph, and instead concentrated on looking for interesting faces in nice light.  So I spent my last afternoon there wandering the streets and alleys around O Russei market, taking some simple portrait pictures with my (to give it its full name) sadly neglected 85mm lens.

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Back in Kompong Cham

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When I first visited Kompong Cham, in January 2012, the weather was hot and dry, and the ramshackle bamboo bridge connected the town with Koh Paen island in the middle of the Mekong.  This time around, the weather was hot and wet, and the bridge had been washed away by the rising river water, to be rebuilt again once the rain has abated later in the year.  Some things hadn’t changed though.  Like Kratie, my previous stop, the town still has a low-key charm, thanks mainly to its warm and generous people.  One of the women featured in this post (the last but one picture, a Cham muslim woman photographed in the covered fish market) I also have a picture of from my first visit.

The wet weather meant that I didn’t get out and about as much as I would have liked, so these pictures are all from the market and the town centre.

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Tour de Cambodge

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I think Cambodians may be the friendliest people on Earth – and those in rural communities may be the friendliest people in Cambodia. In the countryside around Kratie, I encountered hospitality, curiosity and bemusement in roughly equal measure. Small children lined up at the roadside to high-five me as I cycled past. When I stopped to wander through a village, adults asked questions about where I was from and what I was doing there, and often encouraged me to photograph them or their friends.

I’ll never never be much of an athlete, but travelling by bicycle is probably my favourite way of getting out into the countryside. I like not having to rely on someone else to show me the sights and being able to stop whenever I choose. It helps that the landscape in this part of Cambodia is pretty much flat as well – no gruelling hill climbs for me, although there are plenty of small angry dogs and perilous pot-holes to avoid. The only racing I did was against the weather, sprinting back to town before the regular afternoon deluge set in.

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Back in Kratie

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When I first visited Kratie, in January last year, the place looked very different.  A fire had recently destroyed the town’s market so the traders had had to set up temporary stalls along the riverfront.  Now, the market has been rebuilt and is thriving again, and the view of the Mekong from the town is happily unobscured.  I had good memories of Kratie from my first visit – I kept recalling meals I’d eaten there, pictures I’d taken, the book I was reading – so I was pleased to see that the town had been revived.  On top of that, it was also good to be somewhere familiar again, for the first time since leaving Vientiane a few weeks earlier.

My previous visit was part of a trip I took during the Tet holiday 2012, when I travelled from Saigon, through the Mekong delta, and into eastern Cambodia:  my Mini Mekong Trip, as I now think of it.   At the time, I wrote about how one day I wanted to go on a longer Mekong journey, following the river from southern China to the delta in Vietnam.  And this is what I’ve been doing for the last couple of months: my Big Mekong Trip, now sadly nearer its end than its beginning.

I’ve mostly been using my standard zoom lens on this trip, but in Kratie’s streets, I brought out my 50mm.  I wanted to get some simple portraits and detail shots.  I love taking people pictures with my 50mm lens; it makes you get close to people but still allows your subjects some room to breathe.

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Bride

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Cycling through the Cambodian countryside near Kratie, along the east bank of the Mekong river, I stopped in a little village to have lunch and take some pictures.  This lady, who I first noticed sitting at the top of the steps to her stilt house, happily sat for a couple of photographs before disappearing inside.  I thought that the moment had passed, but she soon reappeared holding her wedding photo from, I’m guessing, about twenty years ago.  We had no language in common, but she was clearly keen for me to see the picture, and to photograph her holding it.  There was no sign of her husband apart from the picture – I’m hoping that he was just out running an errand somewhere and would soon return.

Blue skies and green fields

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At the southernmost point of Laos, the Mekong river widens and splits into countless channels and streams as it encounters thousands of small islands in its path. It’s like a dress rehearsal for the Mekong delta to the south. The exact number of islands varies with the seasons, as the water level rises and falls, but the area is known as Si Phan Don, or Four Thousand Islands.

There are several little tourist enclaves dotted around the waterfront areas of the islands, particularly on Don Det, while inland there are tiny villages, and acres of rice paddies. I spent my days reading and relaxing, sheltering from the sun, before venturing out for some late afternoon cycle rides. It was the perfect way to say goodbye to Laos before heading on into Cambodia.

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Becalmed

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I ran out of steam a little in Pakse. Having spent the previous seven weeks travelling from Yunnan province in China down to southern Laos, I found that I had lost my momentum. The weather – alternating between exhausting heat and apocalyptic thunderstorms – didn’t help, and Pakse isn’t the most enticing of towns, but I can’t really blame these things for my lack of energy. I know from experience that when these listless moods come along, I just have to wait them out. After a few days of feeling tired and heavy even before breakfast, I woke up one day suddenly feeling clearer and brighter. I left town the next day.

Pakse looks a little like Savannakhet, my previous stop, with plenty of that faded colonial thing going on, but feels more neglected than charming. Although I wasn’t that happy with my pictures at the time, with distance – in terms of days passed and miles travelled – I’ve come to like some of them and am happy to post them here.

Since leaving Pakse, incidentally, I’ve been getting up early in the morning and cycling in the afternoons, England have been doing well in the cricket, and the world seems a brighter place.

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A wet wat

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At the time, I thought that my visit to Wat Phu Champasak was a complete washout, ruined by the rain.  But looking at these pictures again today, I quite like the way the ruined Khmer temple looks in the wet.

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