Author: Steve Barru

Photographer, bookworm, traveler, born in the United States in 1949, left the United States in 1987, spent years in China, settled in Vietnam in 2016.

Elevated Village, Cambodia

Kampong Phluk village sits on the banks of Tonlé Sap Lake, the largest freshwater body in Southeast Asia. Water levels in the lake vary enormously between the dry season from roughly November to March and the rainy monsoon season from May to October. The Tonlé Sap River connects the lake to the Mekong River and water flows back and forth between the lake and the Mekong in a complex relationship determined by annual rains. The village is set on stilts to keep houses and other structures above the water line during the rainy flood season. I visited in late March when water levels are at their lowest. The woman on the stairs is bouncing back and forth – literally – between different levels of her house, apparently gathering the things needed to make lunch.

Floating Market, Chau Doc, Vietnam

Between the north and south shores of the Bassac River as it flows by the city of Châu Đốc, there is a floating wholesale market every day. Ethnic Cham people who live on the north bank of the river bring fruits and vegetables from their farms to the market. Ethnic Vietnamese townspeople from Châu Đốc on the south side of the river buy produce for sale in land borne retail markets in the city.

Fishing on the River, Vietnam


The family in the photo is fishing in the Bassac River as is flows through Châu Đốc, a Vietnamese city of about 160,000 people on the country’s border with Cambodia. These are ethnic Cham people who live in a village built on the water – the houses in the photo are part of the village. For close to 1000 years Cham kingdoms controlled much of what is today central and southern Vietnam. As ethnic Vietnamese expanded south from the Red River area around Hanoi – the original home of Vietnamese civilization – there was both interaction and conflict between the Cham and the Vietnamese. The Vietnamese eventually prevailed, destroying the last Cham kingdom and assimilating the Cham people into the rather complicated ethnic mix that today makes up the population of modern Vietnam.

Banteay Srei Temple, Cambodia

Carvings and bas-relief decorate the walls and surfaces of many of the temples that make up the Angkor Wat complex. The figure in the center is this wall art is the Hindu deity Shiva – I am pretty sure I have this right – and the figure below Shiva is a Garuda, a mythical bird that helps to protect the god. Not as certain I have that last part right. The photo was taken at Banteay Srei, a 10th century Khmer temple dedicated to Shiva. The carving pictured here is small and highly detailed, part of a larger section of wall. I had the camera up close to the wall and would guess the real-world dimensions of the artwork in this photo are roughly 15 by 10 inches (40 by 25 centimeters).

The Face of Buddha, Cambodia

The Bayon temple, part of the enormous Angkor Wat temple area in Cambodia, has numerous faces of the Buddha carved into the temple’s towers. The best known of these is a smiling Buddha face. I tried to get a photo of that one, but it was surrounded by a large group of Chinese tourists taking photos in front of the face one or two at a time. I gave up and decided I could live with some shots of lesser known carvings.