Brides to Be Phnom Penh

Brides to Be Phnom Penh - Chris Coles

All lined up, perfect posture, hair, make-up and super expensive wedding dress...ready to go on a moment's notice if you've got the cash.......

Wedding Island Banquet Hall Entrance

Wedding Island Banquet Hall Entrance - Chris Coles

The entrance to the wedding banquet palace is alive with action, big SUV's, Mercedes, BMW's, Khmer ladies dressed in silk and chiffon, their hair done up like movie stars, tons of fresh flowers, the drifting notes of the band and singer, a lot of bowing and waiing as the precise social hierarchy of the arriving Big Men and their wives and children is dealt with and sorted out...........

Wedding Island Banquet Hall Phnom Penh

 

Banquet Hall, Phnom Penh Wedding Island - Chris Coles

A thousand guests, all dressed up, sit down to eat, drink and celebrate a hi-end super expensive Cambodian wedding between someone somehow connected to a "Big Man" to someone else connected to another "Big Man"......live band, Khmer pop singer, dancers...lots of gifts, some of them cash stuffed in envelopes....it's the new Phnom Penh, the new Cambodia, rising from the ashes of the Khmer Rouge nightmare....