4 Rivers Floating Lodge Wedding in Cambodia | Natasha and Ben
This wasn’t your typical destination wedding – more the start of a journey, as Natasha and Ben began an open-ended tour of Southeast Asia, no real plans, just seeing which way the roads wound, and the breeze blew.
So, on a whim, sight-unseen, they booked 4 Rivers Floating Lodge, deep in the heart of the Cambodian jungle, as their destination wedding venue. Then they invited a dozen of their family and friends to fly in from around the world – including a few who had never left Australia before. Rural Cambodia is not an easy introduction to world travel. It could have been a disaster. A million things could have gone wrong. But, as often happens when you carry an open mind and a kind heart, it all worked out perfectly.
This wasn’t so much about a wedding ceremony – more about sharing a once-in-a-lifetime adventure with the people you love. About telling tales while fishing in a river thousands of miles from where you usually fish at home. About falling down in the mud and laughing while digging for clams. About exploring a culture so much different from your own, and then discovering that, well, things aren’t really all that different after all.
And this is the amazing thing about destination weddings. There’s a certain magic that happens sometimes, if you give yourself a chance to explore, where you let everything go and immerse yourself in a new world with old friends. You jump into the river and feel its warm current gently pull you past the mangroves and fireflies, and as you close your eyes and listen to the murmuring conversation between the jungle and the water, time slows down. Sometimes it takes really getting away from everything in your life to feel at peace.
And then a man in a kayak paddles up to you and delivers an icy cold beer, and complete balance in the universe is achieved.
Julian,
Firstly, Thank you for joining us on our journey and we every much enjoyed your company.
You have capured the essence of happiness
The photo’s are so much more than a 1000 words the images are very inspiraring and brilliant.
Wonderful; so well written and expressing so much in a few words. Thank you for sharing. And the photos are the next best thing to being there for me. So great to see a little of the journey through your eyes.
BTW, Nat, lets you forget, we are now less than a month from the 10th anniversary of our UT graduation. Isn’t it amazing to think of all we done in just those ten years. Wow! :>)