Khmer Offerings

My Photo scholarship 2011 entry

Worldwide | Tuesday, November 8, 2011 | 5 photos

It's a late Saturday afternoon in Phnom Penh, and along the Tonle Sap River the waterfront is alive with colour and song. This is family hour, Pchum Ben the “gathering together”. A time when locals meet to make offerings to their ancestors, this is a time of reunion, community, commemoration, express love and appreciation.

As the sun sets over the river clusters of elderly women sit on concrete benches overlooking the water, peddlers set up stands from which they sell items of offer, lilies, coconuts filled with incents and little finches to be released into the skies.