A pad Thai

Okay, the title is a terrible pun (and a stretch, as you'll read) but I still couldn't resist.

If you scroll down a bit and read the entry, "What are the odds?" you'll see that my July 9th bride, Blake Newmark, and I both photographed the exact same little girl in Petra, Jordan. The odds of this, needless to say, are fairly slim. Blake and I wouldn't meet until ten years after our respective trips. And as someone has pointed out, it's not just the girl: her brother is in both pictures as well.

Things like this happen to me all the time. During the first Gulf War I spent two months in Saudi Arabia. At one point I was stuck in the middle of the desert with a Navy unit, trying to get to Kuwait City. It was the day of the liberation of that country and every photographer was trying to hitch a ride. So there I was, at M.O.N. Air Force Base (for Middle of Nowhere), waiting for our C-130 to be refueled. I don't think there were more than 100 soldiers at this makeshift landing strip, but sure enough one of them came up to me and said, "Did you go to SUNY-Binghamton??"

With this in mind, it should come as no surprise that I would bump into a dear old friend at a wedding. But the distance that this old friend would travel to be at this wedding is more than your average Delta Shuttle flight to LaGuardia.

This past Memorial Day I was shooting the wedding of Shaalani Ranasinghe and Brian Stone, above, at Meridian House. I was chatting with the caterer when a woman strolled by. We both paused for a sec, did respective double takes--Narisara? Matt?--before doubling over with laughter. Narisara is an old friend of my sister Jennifer, dating back to their days at Time Life Books. But those days were circa 1992, when we all used to gather to watch Melrose Place every week, and none of us had seen Narisara since. She had moved to Thailand, gotten married (to a photographer!), and settled in Cambodia.

It turns out Narisara had attended Cathedral School with Shaalani and had come all the way from Cambodia for the wedding. At the end of the evening we exchanged business cards and I promised that I would look her the next time I was in Siem Reap.

Exactly two months later I traveled to Doylestown, Pennsylvania to photograph the wedding of April Kozen and Kent Scholla, left. April and Kent are travelers after my own heart. Their honeymoon was a three and a half week trek through much of Southeast Asia, with stops in Bangkok, Vietnam, Laos, and, you guessed it, Siem Reap, Cambodia. So there was yours truly, Chatty Cathy, quickly offering up Narisara's phone and email. I sent Narisara a note and three minutes later I got a response. I know I shouldn't be surprised at this anymore but it still bewilders me nonetheless. (In fact, both album companies we use these days are overseas--one in Italy, the other in New Zealand, something that wouldn't have been possible ten years ago.) Anyway, Narisara was happy to offer any advice they might need. "It is Cambodia, so the plumbing's a little eccentric, but it's all part of life!" she wrote.

Well, Kent and April are back in the States and they had a wonderful honeymoon. It turns out that the gallery that Narisara and her husband John operate is just a stone's throw from the temples at Angkor Wat. April and Kent paid a visit to the gallery and bought a few of John's amazing photos.

It's small world, that's for sure.

So the next time you find yourself in Siem Reap, stop by and say hello to Narisara and John. The gallery is located on Pokambor Avenue, next to the FCC and the Royal residence. And the next time you guys are planning some exotic honeymoon, fill me in! I have connections...

Matt