Monday Memories – Flying into Siem Reap for the First Time

You would be forgiven for thinking by now we’d be jaded travellers. We’ve travelled to over seventy-something countries, we’ve been to hundreds of cities and towns, scores in the past few years alone, and we’ve been to dozens of places, the places we become smitten with, many times. As you can see, we’re not very good at keeping count.

However, we still get excited about visiting a new country or city. We were jumping out of our seats as we were flying into Siem Reap, Cambodia. It was a bright day with beautiful light as we flew in low over the fields.

Some fields were green with the new crop of rice, while others were bare, perhaps being ‘rested’ or rotated out for the season, leaving the land looking like a chequerboard.

Monday Memories – Flying into Siem Reap for the First Time

The small villages were easy to pick out too, plenty of intense greenery and tall palm trees and often a small dam nearby.

While this was fascinating, we’d heard all the stories, that the town was a tourist trap, with predatory tuk-tuk drivers, unforgiving humidity, and countless shops full of tourist trinkets. Yet that didn’t deter us.

While we always take these kind of stories on board, we never let them dampen our enthusiasm or diminish our excitement for a place, especially a town like Siem Reap, the departure point for stupendous Angkor Wat.

Siem Reap is a major tourist destination in Asia. Of course there are going to be souvenir-sellers. Predatory tuk-tuk drivers? We’re based in Bangkok, we’re used to them.

Humidity? We’ve lived in Dubai and I grew up in Brisbane, Australia, where ‘air-conditioning’ during the humid summers was opening up all the windows in the house and stripping to your underwear.

Whenever we’re headed somewhere new, I’m squinting out the window like a five-year-old on their first flight. And I’m taking photos when flying into a place like Siem Reap like the one above. If you’re not, maybe it’s time to stay at home.

Details: Nikon D700, Nikon 35mm F2 @ F7.1 @ 1/1000th second @ ISO400.

For details on getting to Siem Reap and arrivals procedure, see this post.

Monday Memories is a random series of reflections on photographs taken by pro photographer Terence Carter, half of the team/couple behind Grantourismo, a project/site launched in 2010, dedicated to slow, local and experiential travel and food. Terence has a decades-long career spanning editorial, portraiture, and food and travel photography.

If you enjoyed this post and found it helpful to your photography, do browse these Monday Memories posts on Street Photography in Siem Reap, Siem Reap Dance Troupe Portraits, Photographing Phnom Penh in the Wet Season, My Kind of Blue, Traditional Shadow Puppet Show in Phnom Penh, Capturing A Face in the Crowd to Convey a Vast Crowd, A Girl Crossing a Suspension Bridge in Battambang, A Student Stretches at Battambang Circus School, Love at First Click of the Camera, An Elephant Encounter in Siem Reap, Reality Bytes, A Monk on the Mekong River in Laos, and The Dubai Camel Handler.