No paragraphs here, I will let the images speak for themselves. If you’ve never been to Cambodia, you should try to visit this amazing place at least once in your life. It won’t be like anywhere you’ve been before. Enjoy and check out Part 1 of this series in the previous post!
Ok so this is long overdue. I wanted to take my time with this post because 1) there were so many images to go through 2) it was difficult narrowing down my favourites and 3) Cambodia and the people I’m connected to there are things I hold close to my heart and I wanted this post to be more than just a large display of vacation photos. This trip definitely had its interesting moments including my cousin’s car falling in the rice field ditch, the massive flooding that left us briefly stranded on the streets of Siem Reap and a flooded iPhone that then only functioned as a music player with no display. Ahh yes, good times! As frustrating as it was at the time, I knew the images were going to make a great story. Actually, I think I spent more time laughing about it and photographing things while my parents and cousins just got annoyed at the situation ha ha.
So a little background info. I am what I like to call “Camese”, a happy mixture of Cambodian and Vietnamese. My dad’s entire family actually still reside in Cambodia in the small village of Chipou while my mother’s side all live here in Canada. We don’t get to visit my family in Cambodia often so any trip there is important. Prior to my first visit a few years ago, I only heard of stories of what it was like there and only knew of this other side of my family through outdated photos. I’m extremely grateful to have had the opportunity to see, learn, and experience first hand how my parents lived and how my family lives now. I’m not the type that wants to go back to a hotel and watch tv, I want to sleep on the oversized bamboo table outside and listen to my parents, relatives, cousins, and their neighbours talk about life. There’s an amazing sense of community among the people in the village and I feel like community plays such an important role in Cambodian culture. I’ve always grown up with tons of people around me. I had the real aunts, the sort of aunts, the cousins but not really, a family friend I called uncle just because he was an older man and all those fun characters. As a child, falling asleep to loud chatter was always much more comforting than silence. I’m glad my family made the conscious effort to teach us, the younger generation, the customs and traditions of our culture. How could I fully understand my world and who I am without knowing where I’ve come from? I loved being back and I wish the trips were more frequent. We don’t get to see our family there nearly enough.
So this is Cambodia. This is a large part of who I am. I tried my best to capture things from a local perspective, to give insight on everyday life seen beyond air conditioned hotels and shiny aviators bought for $4. Aside from the images taken at Angkor Wat, you probably won’t find most of these places on a colourful map found at the airport. :)
Now if you’ve read all the way through, thanks. If you’ve scrolled down to the end, well thanks for being so excited about my photos :). Either way, I hope you enjoy this post! I promise part 2 won’t be as long but still filled with lots of eye candy. Enjoy!
I love that song. “Empire State of Mind” by Jay-Z & Alicia Keys, a good jam but unfortunately I didn’t get to listen to it while I was there. Actually I didn’t get to listen to any music except in the taxi coming from the airport into Manhattan. Our cabbie, “Mr. Yes”(who also could have been Funk Master Flex), was bumping some pretty good beats. NYC has the best urban radio stations! Other than that, the rest of the trip’s soundtrack consisted of soothing elevator muzak and the music mashup that was heard in Time Square. Gotta love it.
So I decided to surprise my boyfriend Devon with a trip to New York City for his 30th birthday! What a great trip! Eating amazing food, seeing NYC, being huge nerds and taking tons of photos, having celebrities encounters and waking up to the best view. Right, did I mention we were staying at a million dollar condo two blocks from Times Square for FREE? Now that was badass. Huge thanks to my friend who offered up his place for a few days while he was on vacation. You’ll see the amazing view we had in the photos below.
Alright, so whenever I watched those Food Network shows and they showed people eating and complimenting on how good the food was at a restaurant, I always thought how exaggerated it was. I mean really, is the food really “mind blowing” or is it just pretty good and you don’t want to get cut from the scene if you give a mediocre review. I’m telling you, there were no cameras or crazy famous chef’s cursing in the background but I was making those made-for-tv comments while dining at Chef Mario Batali’s restaurant Del Posto. Honestly, some of the most amazing food and flavour combinations I’ve ever had. The wood-grilled lobster with artichokes, hazelnuts & basil – one of the highlights of the whole trip! I wish it wasn’t so dark and I had a proper camera to take a photo of it. My iPhone 4 failed miserably here. If you ever go to New York City, you MUST go here. I’m not sure if you noticed but my trips usually revolve around food and you’ll probably end up reading about it on here too haha.
Some other highlights, we saw Ryan Reynolds our first day as he came out of the David Letterman show and later that day we randomly got approach by a young fellow who happened to work for the Letterman show and got tickets to the next taping. The guest for the show we saw was none other than Newmarket/York Region alum, Jim Carrey. There aren’t too many famous people from around here so in my moment of crazy and hometown pride, I thought it was only right that I would shout “NEWMARKET YEAH!” in his face as he came out to sign autographs after the show. From the photo, it looks like I scared him a little haha. Sorry Jim, didn’t mean to startle you but thanks for the great photo op and not having your security remove me from the premises :) The Ryan Reynolds photos will have to wait as I only had my film camera at the time. The film is currently being developed.
The trip was much too short, there’s just too much to see and do there that three days was not nearly enough. I felt like I power-walked for three days straight. A quick note to others, the Guggenheim Museum is closed on Thursdays. We found that out by reading the sign on the door at the Gugge :(
In any case, an excellent trip and there’s no one I would have rather been there with than my favourite nerd ♥
Enjoy the photos and leave a comment and let me know what you think! Ping!
These were the views from the condo :D
This is Jim Carrey looking scared.
Sorry for the delay! Not only have I been trying to play catchup with work and photos but my body has also been trying to make up for lost sleep and the 3 straight days of power walking through one of the busiest cities in the world. I spent the first two days in bed sick and pretty much slept through the weekend. I have A LOT of catching up to do. I can’t wait to share my New York City photos with you! It’s still one of my favourite places to visit. NYC was amazing and I’m pretty excited about those photos so those will probably go up first and then at some point I’ll get through all my other shoots and post those too :) Until then, check out my of my favourite shots from the trip.
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