Tag Archives: Cambodia

Explore Siem Reap, Cambodia (Video)

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This is a mixture of video clips and pho­to­graphs taken during our trip to Siem Reap, Cambodia in August 2010. The cre­ation of the video and the footage was taken by Laura Beauchamp. The fea­tured pho­to­graphs were taken by Chris Beauchamp.

The video was made using iMovie. Laura was feeling cheesy when she made it so she used the “Photograph Album” video tem­plate. She also apo­lo­gizes for the glitches in the sound, she’s looking into a solu­tion.

Siem Reap, Cambodia from Chris Beauchamp on Vimeo.

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Phnom Penh, Cambodia (where we ate some tarantulas!)

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Tuol Sleng Museum. During the Cambodian Genocide (1975−79), this former school was turned into the main prison in the Phnom Penh area. Several thou­sand people were kept here, inter­rog­ated, tor­tured, and even­tu­ally shipped off to the nearby killing fields at places like Choeung Ek (which we also visited). I’ll post more on this eventually.

Running boy, Phnom Penh.

Scooter family, Phnom Penh.


Cell Block (former classrooms), Tuol Sleng Prison Museum.

Chains remain. Cell Block (former classrooms), Tuol Sleng Prison Museum.

Cell Block (former classrooms), Tuol Sleng Prison Museum. The cells are simple brick con­struc­tion. Since pris­on­ers were kept con­tinu­ally shackled at the ankles, they didn’t have to worry about having the cell walls go all the way to the ceiling.

Cell Block (former classrooms), Tuol Sleng Prison Museum.

Some of the kids of the Friends International organ­iz­a­tion. They operate several NGO pro­jects in the country, focused on giving street kids a way out. Some of the more inter­est­ing pro­jects include running two res­taur­ants in Phnom Penh as teach­ing insti­tu­tions where these kids can learn cooking and service to become part of Cambodias growing tourism busi­ness. We ate at both res­taur­ants and had a won­der­ful time at each. The food was amazing, and the service was very, very sincere and friendly. The menus are quite unique too...

Take this inter­est­ing dish for example: Deep-fried tarantula with black pepper and lime. (yes, it is real)

Laura and her new spider friend.

Crunch! That look of woe is sincere, by the way.

Mmmmm. Tastes like chicken.

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Holiday in Cambodia

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We are in Cambodia as of earlier today, fol­low­ing less than a week in Vietnam. It’s been really dis­ap­point­ing to have to see this part of the world on such a short timeline, but on the other hand Laura and I are both men­tally ready to head home and begin the life we have up next.

Blogging has been a little light around here, but I hope you’ll bear with us. I have been working hard with a good friend of mine to build the first of two web­sites I will need to have in place to make a proper go in Grande Prairie of the cre­at­ive work I do. Once these pro­jects are ready to show off, I will be able to go back and catch up on some of the blog­ging I’ve had to miss. I’ll cer­tainly make time in the next few days for a photo-roundup or two, if not some actual writing...

A few quick impres­sions:
Cambodia is pretty cool. It’s dirtier and poorer than its neigh­bours (even Laos). More devel­op­ment issues (street kids, poverty, garbage all over the city), but also has a nice layed back vibe. Lots of people out tonight enjoy­ing the park spaces after the sun went down. Crazy traffic, but nothing like Saigon. We’re in Phnom Phen. We had drinks at the Foreign Correspondents Club tonight. Apparently it’s an old war time insti­tu­tion. Very colo­nial old build­ing; used to be the haunt of journ­al­ists and CIA spooks. Pretty cool. Pretty cool...

p.s. — Irony is dead, as my use of this song title in this post proves:

p.p.s — This old punk song was written during or shortly after the Cambodian gen­o­cide (1975–79-ish) and is a cri­tique of left-wing ideal­istic kids claim­ing to support com­mun­ism without acknow­ledging (or even being aware of) the hor­rendous crimes com­mit­ted in the name of that ideo­logy else­where in the world. The ironic (or post-ironic) part is that the Cambodian Genocide is now very much a tourist draw, and people do in fact holiday in Cambodia, to the tune of mil­lions of indi­vidu­als each year.

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The Great Pho-Tasting Expedition of 2010

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Seungthew (taxi in an-open back pickup truck with bench seating) from Luang Prabang to the local water­fall. Laura will have a post about this day trip some­time soon. (photo by her, of course)

Hey guys,

Laura and I are finally in Vietnam. As many of you already know, she started showing some symp­toms of dengue fever when we were in Luang Prabang, Laos. Our ori­ginal plan was to take a bus from there to Hanoi, in the north of Vietnam, but Dengue is not some­thing you want to mess around with, and since Luang Prabang (and most of Laos) has vir­tu­ally zero modern health­care, we decided to head to the capital Vientiane instead. Luckily, by the time we got there, Laura’s fever had passed and her other symp­toms calmed down. Facing another epic (24−30 hour) bus ride to get from Vientiane to Vietnam, we caved and bought some plane tickets via the north of Thailand to Ho Chi Minh City instead (via Bangkok).

We are rapidly running out of time on this little journey of ours, and the con­sequence is that we will be blitz­ing through south­ern Vietnam and Cambodia, giving these coun­tries far less time than they deserve (but at least seeing a thing or two along the way). Can you believe that two weeks from tomor­row we’ll be landing in Vancouver? We sure can’t.
We’ve been laying low for the past week or so, mostly chilling in hotels while mon­it­or­ing Laura’s health (she really is all better), so we’re going to be com­pens­at­ing over the next couple of weeks, trying to get out and see as much as pos­sible. Should be good for the bloggin’.

Cheers,
Chris

p.s. — “Pho” is Vietnamese soup, some­thing we ate at least once a week when we lived in Calgary, and one of our favour­ite foods in the world. We had our first bowl last night, and wholly goddamn mine was spicy! Don’t under­es­tim­ate the diced hot peppers that come on the side.

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