nearly a million foreign tourists<\/a> in 2025. Outside of the city, laundry services have sprung up to support the boom in tourism and supplement the incomes of rural communities. The fee for a small load of laundry is typically 4,000 riel, or about one U.S. dollar. <\/p>\nCasta\u00f1eda Lee photographed locals in hopes of appreciating the invisible workers on the other side of Cambodian tourism, who spend hours each day doing the laundry of tourists.<\/p>\n
A double benefit <\/p>\n
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\n Two brothers, Sothea and Bong Chea, do laundry to help make ends meet.<\/p>\n
Macy Casta\u00f1eda-Lee<\/p>\n
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Macy Casta\u00f1eda-Lee<\/p>\n
Roughly halfway between the Siem Reap city center and Tonl\u00e9 Sap lake, Casta\u00f1eda Lee visited two Khmer brothers, Sothea and Bong Chea, in their home of scrap fabric and found objects. Laundry offers a two-fold protection for them, says Casta\u00f1eda Lee: the hanging laundry acts as a makeshift wall to keep out bugs at night and gives them a little extra financial support when they wash the neighbors’ clothes for a small fee.<\/p>\n
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\n A boy stands by his house around the area of Promar Market in Siem Reap, with his guard dog. Casta\u00f1eda Lee tells NPR the boy shared with them: “We have a small laundry business that my family and I run and it helps with money issues. We are in a more remote part of Siem Reap so we have to have more ways to earn income and doing laundry by our house is helpful for us and convenient.”<\/p>\n
Macy Casta\u00f1eda-Lee<\/p>\n
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\n Washing machines and dryers are a luxury in this region, so many laundry businesses and families rely on hand washing and hang drying.<\/p>\n
Macy Casta\u00f1eda-Lee<\/p>\n
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A community affair <\/p>\n
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\n Saam Chan Kanita gets her makeup done at a salon by the Siem Reap river. Casta\u00f1eda Lee tells NPR that Kanita shared with them: “We are trying to be time efficient by doing our makeup and hair while waiting for our laundry to dry. You have to do many things at once to be efficient with your time here.”<\/p>\n
Macy Casta\u00f1eda-Lee<\/p>\n
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Macy Casta\u00f1eda-Lee<\/p>\n
While exploring the communities around the Siem Reap river, Casta\u00f1eda Lee noticed how many children help their families with laundry, including scrubbing clothes in round basins.<\/p>\n
Many families juggle several businesses, like Vonn Da Li Na and his wife, who run the P Salon & Laundry. In a conversation with Vonn Da Li Na, Casta\u00f1eda Lee says he noted that it takes his family hours to do laundry for their business on top of their own laundry. Casta\u00f1eda Lee shared with NPR a quote from him: “It is our work, along with the salon, so we just try to have fun with it. I let my daughter have fun. But I wish we had a washing machine and other resources to make the process faster.”<\/p>\n
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\n A young girl plays in a basin of laundry water after laundry loads have been washed. Her family tries to have fun with their laundry and encourages their daughter to play, according to photographer Casta\u00f1eda Lee.<\/p>\n
Macy Casta\u00f1eda-Lee<\/p>\n
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Casta\u00f1eda Lee spent evenings with these families. “There is this slow, time-consuming labor of doing laundry and farming rice for hours on end each and every day,” they say. “The hard work ethic and care that people put toward their everyday tasks in life \u2014 that’s the symbol of laundry for me.”<\/p>\n
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\n A girl stands by her father’s laundry business by the Siem Reap river. Casta\u00f1eda Lee shared a quote with NPR from the girl’s mother: “I have several small businesses along with our laundry service. We have a small snack store where we sell water, biscuits, etc. to a lot of locals and foreigners too.”<\/p>\n
Macy Casta\u00f1eda-Lee<\/p>\n
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Working with what you have <\/p>\n
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\n Hau N Me Tha Na is a mother of three and owner of a laundry business near Coconut Shell Coffee House. She makes use of what she has, including natural resources like sticks to hang laundry and the Siem Reap River for her business.<\/p>\n
Macy Casta\u00f1eda-Lee<\/p>\n
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Macy Casta\u00f1eda-Lee<\/p>\n
The Siem Reap River is a common source of water for many laundry businesses. “They rely on the natural resources they have, like the rivers,” says Casta\u00f1eda Lee. “But at the same time, I see that it’s not the most sanitary thing for them to do.”<\/p>\n
Still, laundry workers make it work, like Honme Thana, a mother of three who owns a laundry business south of the river. She relies on the river as her water source, since she doesn’t have much access to water in her community, according to Casta\u00f1eda Lee: “She told me she’s learning how to work with nature.”<\/p>\n
Time and patience\u00a0 <\/p>\n
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\n Locals tend to hang laundry in open spaces with a lot of light, so laundry is a visual staple for rural communities around Siem Reap.<\/p>\n
Macy Casta\u00f1eda-Lee<\/p>\n
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Macy Casta\u00f1eda-Lee<\/p>\n
Casta\u00f1eda Lee was drawn to the serene nature that surrounds doing laundry in these communities. “What calmed me throughout this project was that these people weren’t on their phones while waiting for the laundry,” they say. “Sometimes they would just sit and be still,” perhaps a reflection of the Buddhist beliefs in Cambodia that center on stillness and meditation. “They’re in no rush; that’s really changed my perspective.”<\/p>\n
The photographer hopes to return to Siem Reap for a second part of this series one day, since laundry will always be around. “It’ll evolve throughout the years,” Casta\u00f1eda Lee says, but will always reflect the hands of the community that washed it.<\/p>\n
Bec Roldan is an independent science journalist based in Brooklyn, N.Y. They cover health and science topics and previously served as a AAAS Mass Media Fellow at NPR.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A boy does laundry near the Siem Reap River. Macy Casta\u00f1eda-Lee hide caption toggle caption Macy Casta\u00f1eda-Lee In…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":231142,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[437,434,435,436,438,146,85,46],"class_list":{"0":"post-231141","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-arts","9":"tag-arts-and-design","10":"tag-artsanddesign","11":"tag-artsdesign","12":"tag-design","13":"tag-entertainment","14":"tag-il","15":"tag-israel"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231141","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=231141"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231141\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/231142"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=231141"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=231141"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=231141"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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