Hello!
Thanks for your feedback. I will try shorter articles, but not sure I manage at the start. So much happening every day! How could I not share that with you? đ
Saturday 26th Nov: I went to visit the temples of Bantleay Srei (fine decoration, pink stone) and Kbal Spean (pretty walk of 30 min in the forest, carved stones under water, nice waterfall) with Mandy, a girl from Burma/Australia I had met the day before who works currently as an intern at the Phnom Penh Post. In the evening was the closing event of angkor-photo and we partied until sunrise the next day!
http://www.flickr.com/photos/anneleroy/6434600757/in/photostream
Sunday 27th Nov: I met Lorna when having lunch at the place nearby my hotel, a girl who works as a volonteer in a butterfly centre close to Bantleay Srei. We biked to a swimming pool and chilled out there with her friend Tania working for the centre too. There was fish massage there, funny. Learning more about the centre made me want to take photos of it and possibly write a short story about it if I manage. Thinking about coming back to Siem Reap for a week or two to shoot this after the Phnom Penh photo festival…
Monday 28th Nov: With 2 photographers, James Monroe and Roger Ballen, I went to visit 2 remote temples of Kok Ker ( a 7-level pyramid temple).
Then we visited Beng Mealea. That one is astonishing. Huge, mysterious, wild, full of growing vegetations and big trees. Incredibly fascinating temple, my favourite so far.
Check the work of these photographers here:
http://www.jamesmonroeadams.com/
http://www.rogerballen.com/
Tuesday 29th Nov: I took a bus at 8:30am and arrived in Phnom Penh around 3.30pm, all this for 6 dollars bus ticket! I had not booked and picked up one hotel of the Lonely Planet, and chose the one in front finally. I met a French guy Frank, in his fifties/early sixties who backpacks a lot in Asia and gave me some tips. He had worked for Le Petit Futé so it was pretty handy to hear his tips! We went to the French Institute together to get the programme of the Phnom Penh Photo festival. Then I went to the slideshows in the evening at the University of Phnom Penh and met again there with Rasel Chowdury, a young Indian photographer who I had met in Siem Reap. He has a show in this festival. He is really really talented guy, I love his work.
Check this out:
http://lalettredelaphotographie.com/entries/4901/photophnompenh-2011-rasel-chowdhury
Wed 30th Nov: I went to a talk in the morning at the UniversitĂ© des Beaux-Arts, from Christian Caujolle. It was supposed to be about “How to read a photography image” but was just a plain presentation of all events of the festival. A bit disappointing. But there I met Severine, a French backpacker who had lived 2 years in China and was now travelling for 3 months, and 2 photographers, Sven Schwinning and Jacques Sierpinski. Sven is German and lives in Kratie at the moment, and Jaques is a professional photographer who has worked for many travel, hotels and food magazines for the last 40 years, mostly in Asia. Again, an incredible bunch of people. The four of us got along really well, and we went all day from one exhibition to another of the Phnom Penh Photo festival, then to the slideshows in the evening, then for dinner in a beautiful restaurant called Boat Noodles, where we had delicious food and Angkor beer for a total of only 6 dollars per person.
Check the work of these photographers here:
http://www.b-real.de/
http://www.sierpinski.fr/
Sorry if I don’t write more about Phnom Penh itself or life in Cambodia or Khmer Rouges history…I am just making the most of these 2 intense photography festivals for the moment, discovering exhibitions and meeting a lot of photographers without being too much into the touristy stuff yet.
More to come later about country and other..
Going for lunch and seeing more exhibitions now.
Woo…It is already 1st of December!!!!
Hope you guys are fine and not too cold. ;-p
Anne
Pom explores 