World through the lens: Stopover moment at Siem Reap

By TIM HOGG http://www.stuff.co.nz Last updated 20/09/2012

 

School children Floating Village Cambodia

On a trip home from London, a pit stop in Southeast Asia seemed like an exciting prospect.

During my travels throughout the region, Cambodia was and still is one place to remember. In particular Siem Reap, with its phenomenal temples, fragrant cuisine and welcoming people. Stone structures, that over time had been slowly swallowed by aggressive vegetation and choking tree limbs.

One day we left the temples and touts and jumped a boat on to the largest freshwater lake in Southeast Asia, namely Tonle Sap.

Twice a year the lake expands and shrinks with the seasons, changing the landscape dramatically.

The local villagers adapt by raising their houses on wooden stilts and using all manner of boats, rafts and buckets to float between school, work and other daily activities.

I captured this photograph of a young school girl walking home from class with her peers.

I love the contrast between subject and background. Her upright demeanor and the normality of her school uniform playing off against some tearaway kids running through the receding landscape, rickety shacks and debris.

She was a natural model or I was just lucky.