In some ways, the latter half of the residency has become routine, or as routine as a brief stint in Southeast Asia might possibly be, and I’ve been bad about creating photo opportunities for myself.

I did however, join a photo walk around a small area of Phnom Penh, and while we didn’t much venture beyond the well-trodden expat areas, I did manage get snap a few photos I like.

In what looked like an abandoned villa, we came across a group of men playing and watching bocce. It seemed like it was the front of a local snooker club, that opened onto a couple covered volleyball courts, bordered by the old house. In any case, an interesting place for photos.

What a look, huh?

Gross and mesmerizing.

At the beginning of December, I took a trip (that almost didn’t happen) up to Siem Reap, where one can find the famed Angkorian temples. In many ways, it’s like the Taj Mahal* of Cambodia–the historical and symbolic image of the country that is generally considered a must-see for visitors. It managed to hold up pretty well to expectations.

(Above and below) The Bayon library at Angkor Thom.

A doorway to the sky.

Friends.

Ta Prohm (the “famous” one)

Monks at Angkor Wat (the actually famous one)

And then I managed to get to the top of Angkor Wat when it was officially closed for sunset (you can accomplish quite a lot in Cambodia with a $10 bribe). I was blown away by exactly none of my sunset images–you’ll have to take my word for it when I say it was spectacular–but I was pretty impressed by the steepness of the staircases.

And then, of all things, I went off to Thailand for a week!

Chiang Mai was cool (and I had a far more successful moto adventure than in Battambang, but easily the most exciting part about it was this:

I also visited the spectacular Grand Palace in Bangkok, which houses the Temple of the Emerald Buddha. You can’t take pictures inside, but everyone gather around the holy water outside before heading in to pray before the deity.

But perhaps MOST importantly:

*Coming soon

Next stop: India!

Too bad it came a little too close to true…

But I’ll start at the beginning: A few friends and I took a trip up to the north west part of Cambodia, to the provincial city in Battambang. A friend of a friend lives and works up there, and it was as good of an excuse as any to get out of town for the weekend.

The long night bus dumped us at our destination at about 10 in the morning, and after settling into a hotel and grabbing some food, we began our adventures. First up, temples!

This one, Wat Ek Phnom, is actually the first temple I’ve visited in Cambodia. It’s beautiful, set about 18km outside Battambang city, and very peaceful. We rented our first motos, and hit the smooth road there and back. It was a lovely first taste of motorcycle travel, and I can see why people really love seeing the world that way.

The road out to the bamboo train was a little rougher–and when I say a little, I mean, it was kinda scary–but we made it out there in time to catch the sunset as we clanked along on the old train tracks.

The next day we went out to Kamping Puoy reservoir, which was formed when the Khmer Rouge built a damn using the forced labor of thousands of Cambodians.

It’s a gorgeous place, still and serene, if you can forget its history. We weren’t able to figure out if the houses flooded up to their roofs had been there since the lake formed, since they seemed to be in too good shape to have been drowned for so many years.

Our boat driver tied our boat up next to one of those houses and helped us climb up the tree and jump off into the lake.

We left the lake and climbed up Phnom Sampov on our motos, where there’s a temple and some killing caves (yes, that). This is where things got a bit hairy–I managed to scrape up my leg when the path up the hill got the best of me and the bike went over (damn, those things are heavy)–and I stopped taking photos. The view was great (and we got yet another spectacular Cambodian sunset), but I was truthfully more interested in getting back to the city to clean myself up.

A really fun weekend, with admittedly a little too much adventure.

But thanks to an American company called EZ Glide 350, and the entrepreneurial ambitions of Koy Kient Ann and Borith Khy, there now exists a synthetic ice rink on the top floor of Phnom Penh’s Sovanna Mall.

I wrote it up as a business brief, but and the photos are awfully fun:

The staff has a decent handle on how to skate…

… but the customers have to take the triumphs as they come.

And yeah, man. Skating can be exhausting!

When tourists were airlifted off one of the temples near Siem Reap, that made international headlines, or course. But a far greater problem, and one that has gotten little notice outside the country, is how badly the floods–more than two months of standing water–has hurt the country’s farmers.

I went with a colleague to report on this, and shot some images of a farmer’s devastated rice paddies and a family living on the side of the road because they’ve been evacuated from their homes.

I’ll hopefully be able to post a version of the story we wrote soon. I’m really proud of it. Here are some of the pictures.

Rice farmer Chheng Chhiek in his destroyed rice fields.

Pointing out the high point of the water.

Family living at the edge of the road in K. Thom.

Chopping up banana trees to feed the cattle.

Picturesque… and devastating.

When you own a bike in Phnom Penh, it’s probably a cheap bike shipped in from Japan.

The tires were probably old and probably went flat within days of purchase.

You probably spend a fair amount of time with the guys who camp out on street corners, armed with pressurized air tanks, new and used tires, inner tubes, wrenches and motor oil, ready to fix a flat while you wait.

These kids are the bike experts around the corner from the office. For $6, I had both front and back tubes replaced. And let me tell you–riding without flats makes the 15-20 minute commute to and from work a lot less miserable and a lot less sweaty.

Thanks bike boys. Hope I don’t need to see ya anytime soon.

I covered my first story yesterday, with a Khmer colleague, on International Day of Peace. A nothing story that became a little less than nothing when city police stopped a planned march, delaying the celebration for almost an hour and before allowing the group to walk a few circuits in a contained space.

The group was made up of monks, nuns and students… a photogenic group to be sure.

The paper ran an image I took of organizers talking to police, along with the story, but these images are some of my favorites from the morning’s event. This lady was my favorite. I made a number of pictures of her… tough to choose just two.

I’m probably more proud than I should be about the title of this post… really, I’m too clever for my own good. I’ll try to avoid such awful puns in the future.

      GB has a retro sound, kinda Beatles-esque, with quirky and sometimes a little deranged lyrics with skippy melodies. Fun, and often funny. I shot the whole show, including this video of Bob singing “Flowers in the Pavement” off the album.

Also, check out this track, one of my faves (careful, it's catchy):

More photos of the Ginger Binge show.

We were taught some essential first aid, how to respond when we hear gunfire or shelling, or what to do if we come across an UXO, landmine, or vehicle checkpoint.

While my movement was somewhat limited in what I could photograph, and where I could move even when I could, but I got a few decent shots in.

All in all, it was a fantastic weekend. I learned a lot about risk-reducing measures for dangerous places, and had a lot of fun doing it. So now I’m perfectly prepared to avoid stepping on any landmines when I trek off to Cambodia next month.

If that makes you worried for me (mom), support the heroic efforts of groups like the HALO Trust or the Nobel Peace Prize recipient International Campaign to Ban Land Mines. Mine clearing is tedious, difficult work and organizations like these seek and destroy not only landmines but other UXOs such as cluster munitions that kill and maim scores of people every year.

I’ll be honest–I’ve been really, really busy. So busy, in fact, that I’ve hardly taken any photos in the past month. After spring quarter, when my camera almost never left my side, I feel awkward and unpracticed. So I’ve taken a few hundred photos in the past couple days to try and reacclimate myself. I started on my class trip to Gettysburg battlefield and Carlisle, PA, where we visited the Army War College and learned everything there is to know about counterinsurgency from the guy who literally wrote the book on it. He gave us a remarkable blow-by-blow tour of the 3-day battle that is still the bloodiest in American history.

It was a really lovely afternoon, topped off with a sun shower as we headed up toward Cemetery Ridge, where President Lincoln would deliver his famous address four months after the battle. The outcome of the fighting was more or less a draw, but inspired some of Lincoln’s most important words.

Then today, we got free admission to the Newseum, which is basically a shrine to journalism, or as my colleague called it, “journalism heaven”. And how: it has pieces of the Berlin Wall, author-signed copies of items like The Federalist Papers, a news helicopter, Daniel Pearl‘s laptop… the list goes on. It’s 7 floors of media awesome in a stunning modern building with a great view of the city.

Suffice to say, the quarter in Washington has been a great way to finish out my coursework at Medill.

I was on my way to class. She had pink hair and stared at her reflection in the window of the train for like, 4 stops.