"Where do you want to go?"
A year ago, I was sat in my hostel room in Belfast with Zana and Urska, two Slovenian girls with whom I'd traveled to Northern Ireland. Spread out between us was a map of the city. In no time, we'd made a list of places we wanted to see: the Titanic shipyard, Belfast Castle, Napoleon's Nose. That plan left us with one more day to fill, which coincidentally was Easter Sunday. With no other suggestions being brought to the table, I saw my chance and took it.
"There's only one place I want to add to the list," I said. "I want to see the art on the Peace Wall."


The idea had been planted in my head about ten months earlier. As I was sitting on the porch of my "apartment" in Wadi Rum, Jordan, an old man from the group I was traveling with came up to me to ask me about street art. He'd seen me jump ship on an excursion to some biblical site in Bethlehem so I could go to the West Bank Barrier. In hindsight, he regretted not joining me. I told him about my experiences and when he saw my face light up when talking about the intersection of art, history and politics, he told me I should go see Belfast's peace walls someday. I made a mental note of the location and promised him I'd go. My promise was sincere, but I thought of it as something for the distant future. Within a year, however, I found myself in Belfast with the old man's words ringing in my ears.


Granted, Easter 2019 was not the best of times for three to slightly naive university students to visit Nothern Ireland. Lyra McKee was murdered the day before we arrived. We received more than one text from worried parents, asking us about the situation and urging us to keep our eyes open, to stay safe. We were all a little tense when we read about what was going on not too far from us. But Belfast seemed calm and safe, so after a visit to St. George's Market, we went to the Peace Wall.


The easiest way to visit the Peace Wall that has capital letters and a listing on Trip Advisor is by booking a tour. You'll be picked up in a cab and a private tour guide will tell you all about the walls and their history. Us being broke students, we did not book such a tour. We decided to walk instead. It'd take us only half an hour to get there, the sun was shining, and we were oblivious to most of the city's recent history, so walking seemed like a great idea. But soon we found ourselves away from all main roads, in the middle of a residential area where tourists were a rare sight in the streets full of Irish flags. Some vague echo of a historical fact began to wriggle in the back of my mind. It took on the form of U2's song Sunday Bloody Sunday. That's when I realized we were visiting Belfast on days that had more than just a little bit of history attached to them.


I had mixed feelings when I saw the gate. At first, I just felt excited because it opened my eyes to the art I'd been blind to just moments earlier. Almost immediately after that, I felt awful for not fully understanding the history of the place I was visiting. These feelings kept fighting each other as Zana, Urska and I walked along the wall and interpreted some of the pieces. Like the West Bank Barrier, but to a lesser extent, this wall can be read as a newspaper. I lost all sense of time. The marker in my backpack called my name, so I took it out and found a blank spot on the wall. There, between the names of countless others, I wrote the message I'd taken to heart after my visit to the Palestinian Territories: "Make hummus, not walls".


When I left the Peace Wall behind, I was still plagued by mixed feelings. That situation hasn't changed much since then. I have a love-hate relationship with this type of walls, but I can't just not visit them. They prove that something beautiful can come out of a horrible situation, in the form of art. Nonetheless, walls like the Peace Wall in Belfast and the West Bank Barrier in Israel are scars on the face of humanity. They might be effective, but inhumane. Yet still I'll keep visiting them. There's a lot we can learn from ugly solutions, and maybe one day we'll sort our problems out without separating communities with walls. Make hummus, not walls.

One of the main to go for group travel to join on my trip to Israel was that everything would be planned out and confirmed already. You get some time to explore by yourself here and there, but visits to museums and transportation to the next city are all taken care of. So every morning in the Middle East, I'd look at the travel program I'd gotten and know what's up - until we hit Jerusalem. As it turns out, the travel organization had given out two different programs, with some significant differences between them. One stated we'd get half a day to ourselves to explore Jerusalem, the other said this would happen in Bethlehem. A quick vote decided we'd spend that afternoon in Bethlehem. I quietly cheered: this meant that I could go look at the street art on the West Bank Barrier!


The West Bank Barrier, under construction since 2000 by Israel, is a hideous concrete structure that spans 708 kilometers, separating the Palestinian West Bank from Israel. It's also known as the Separation Wall, Security Fence or Wall of Apartheid. The wall legendary in the street art world, partially because of how much space it offers, mainly because Banksy left some clear political statements on it. After seeing his work framed at exhibitions in Antwerp and Amsterdam I was dying to see Banksy's art in the wild. My tour guide, a very anti-Palestine man, completely lost his temper when he heard me say I was excited to go to the Barrier for the art.
'Do you even know why that wall was built?!' he basically yelled at me. I admitted that I didn't. As it turns out, the Israelis say that they built a concrete barrier to protect themselves from Muslim suicide bombers. The Palestinians, however, see it as racial segregation. They're vocal about it, and one way to show how they feel about the situation is through art on the very thing that symbolizes the problems in the region. It's this combination of art and politics that drew me to the West Bank Barrier while the rest of the tour group went to visit churches and biblical places as usual.


After a very brief, more or less obligatory visit to the Church of the Nativity with the entire group, I set out for the wall with the friends I'd made in the group, a young Frisian couple. We walked through the old city and soon saw the first signs of Banksy's visit in the shape of some relatively small stencils depicting children playing with bombs and toys made of barbed wire. One of these stencils happened to be on the corner of the street our hotel was on. It was a nice warm-up for what was to come, though we decided to take a little detour to one of Banksy's works on the wall of the Palestinian Heritage Center on Manger Street. Here, a huge white dove in a bulletproof vest offers an olive branch while trapped in a sniper's crosshairs. My Frisian friends hadn't seen it yet, so I showed them the mural and explained how it was made. In terms of artistry and message, it was one of my favorite pieces of the day.

Once we'd taken enough pictures to last us a lifetime, we left for the wall for real now. We approached it from Manger Street, then Hebron Road, where we were greeted by concrete blocks with slogans in crude spray painted letters on them. For a second I was scared. Up until that moment, I hadn't really thought about safety much, as Bethlehem was so calm and the people so friendly. But the concrete blocks and enormous watch towers sent shivers down my spine. What if walking too close to the barrier would be viewed as a threat by the Israeli army? At the same time, my mind registered the details and size of the enormous murals and I realized those were a sign of safety: if anyone approaching the wall would be seen as a threat, there would be no art there.


We walked straight up to the barrier, down an alley were not many tourists seemed to come. I was in street art heaven. I snapped picture after picture and eventually even climbed up on the base to slap one of my own stickers on the West Bank Barrier. It was so different from all the biblical places I'd visited with the group. It was beautiful in a painful way. It made me want to change the world in ways I can't, because I simply don't have that kind of political power. All I can do is talk and write about Palestine, just like most Palestinians can only paint on this awful wall to let their voices be heard.


"Make hummus, not walls" seems to be the slogan of the Palestinians, though they also don't shy away from calling the West Bank an 'outdoor prison' on the endless concrete. There are official plaques with information, but you'll learn far more about the situation in Palestine and the way Palestinians experience it by looking at the graffiti. The 'ugly' tags are voices shouting the opinions of those who experienced oppression, the beautiful murals are well-written pleas for peace and justice. There was a huge piece depicting Messi shooting a football through barbed wire, as Argentine canceling a match with Israel prior to the World Cup was seen as a positive thing on this side of the wall. There's a mirror, showing us we're all people, no matter our background, culture and religion.


The paint fills every inch of the concrete here with countless Palestinian flags, the words "Free Palestine" and the ever-present "Make hummus, not walls". Of course there are original Banksy pieces too, but though they were what drew me to the wall in the first place, the piece that hit me hardest was a huge portrait of Razan, a Palestinian girl who volunteered as a nurse/paramedic but won't ever treat another patient again: She was shot by the Israeli army while she was treating a patient close to the border in Gaza last June. The Dutch media has remained eerily silent on this story...


Though the situation is grave, the colorful murals lifted my spirits while I walked along the West Bank Barrier. Yet the art wasn't the only interesting thing on this walk. Soon Palestinians came up to us to tell us about life on the West Bank. The man attending to the small shop full of Banksy merchandise went out of his way to explain the Messi and Razan paintings. He pointed details out and handed us a ladder so we could take better pictures. Another man came up to us and, in an attempt to get us to buy a drink from his stall out of pity, told us he had fairly recently gotten out of prison. He'd killed a man: after his innocent father had died in a tear gas attack from the Israeli army, he went berserk and left the Israelis with one soldier less in their ranks. Though I can't vouch for this particular story, it was still shocking to hear, because this is the harsh reality for Palestinians on the West Bank as well as in Gaza. It's an insight like this, meeting locals and talking to them, that made the whole experience even more special.


After our conversations with the locals, we continued walking along the wall until we reached Banksy's Walled Off Hotel. I didn't go inside, because the wall intrigued me more. Sadly, the street art was quite low-quality here. Right next to the Walled Off Hotel, shops have popped up where you can hire spray cans and stencils. This has resulted into layer upon layer of rip-off miniature Banksies and generic images like superhero logos and even Taylor Swift's album cover for Reputation. The latter appalled me. To me, the West Bank Barrier shows we didn't learn from Berlin: It's a place to think about the way we as humans treat one another, not a place to stan your favorite artist. I also wonder how Banksy, who is known for his anti-capitalistic views, feels about his stencils being rented out as a fun activity for tourists, helping them leave their mark on this wall with no thought behind it whatsoever.


At that moment, just as I was getting fed-up with the commercialization of art and political statements on the West Bank Barrier, we decided to turn back and go for a drink in the old city. We could have walked on for much longer, all the way up to Checkpoint 300, but I think that would have become overwhelming. There's so much to see that you don't really take it in anymore after the first couple of hundred meters. I could've spent days looking at all the art, but we had a trip to the Dead Sea planned the next day. I fully enjoyed my time at the wall though, weird as that may sound considering the political situation it symbolizes. The thing is, this afternoon in the shadows of the West Bank Barrier gave me a better insight into politics and life on the West Bank. Without this visit, I only would've seen the Israeli side of this conflict's story. If you're looking for the Palestinian side, this is the place to go: you'll see it told in the beautiful and raw language of street art.

No, Banksy didn't leave one of his famous Laugh Now monkeys on the streets of my country's capital. Sadly. We don't have that kind of luck in the Netherlands. We have a different kind of luck here: the Modern Contemporary Museum in Amsterdam, Moco for short, brought a Banksy exhibition to Holland. And you know me, I can't let a Banksy exhibition slide.

The exhibition seems to be a permanent one for now, but each source has something different to say on that matter. I'd read somewhere it's only last till June (which is false, apparently) and I had a coupon for a free ticket that I could use till May, so on the last Saturday of April my boyfriend had the questionable honor of being dragged to the capital in the name of art and blog posts. It was his first Banksy exhibition, but my second: I'd been to The Art of Banksy in Antwerp in 2017 and to be honest, I expected Laugh Now to be more of the same sort of street art awesomeness. I'd loved the dark ambiance of the Antwerp exhibition that made it feel like you were actually on the streets. Moco, as it turned out, couldn't have been more different from that place though. The museum is located in Villa Alsberg, a town hours in the middle of Amsterdam's Museumplein. It looked very small from the outside and there was a long line in front of the building. I feared we'd be waiting for hours, but we soon passed the front gates, above which two heart-shaped balloons were floating like in one of Banksy's most famous works. 


Once inside, I immediately noticed how far away I was from the street art world. Moco is a serious museum of the kind that has signs with interpretations and materials listed. Works on white walls without any distractions. Middle-aged and old people looking to buy some more risky stuff for their personal collection. Let me tell you, people like that were nowhere to be found in Antwerp. Not that it bothered me. I was too busy checking out all the art.


The first piece I saw couldn't have been more perfectly placed: facing the entrance, right above the staircase to the first floor. It looked like it truly belonged there. It was also a piece I'd never seen before, which took away some of my concern regarding the exhibition. I'd been afraid there wouldn't be a whole lot of new stuff for me to see after visiting The Art of Banksy and reading Banksy's book Wall and Piece. Luckily, that wasn't the case at all. We walked up to the first floor, where the majority of the artworks was on display. Now I'm used to seeing prints and pictures of Banksy's work, but Moco has more to offer: you get to see the pieces on the actual walls, doors and in one case street sign they were originally made on. I could barely wrap my mind around the fact that I was facing surfaces the same way Banksy had done years before when he went out with his stencils and spray cans. It was a weird and kind of magical sensation.


We wandered from room to room and soon I found myself straying away from the more well-known pieces like Girl With Balloon. Okay, it was cool to see that one in real life, next to the phone case I bought just because it had that image on it. But I was more interested in the pieces I hadn't seen yet, the pieces that had carefully been removed from the sides of buildings and the pieces I'd only seen in pictures from Wall and Piece. Even if you've been to a Banksy exhibition before, you won't get bored for a second during your visit to Moco.


Time flew by without me even noticing. I enjoyed the second floor as much as the first and I have to say that the curators did an amazing job at arranging and displaying the pieces in a way that worked so well for all of them. The only thing that got under my skin after a while where the explanations and interpretations on the signs next to the art. Those are two things I don't associate with street art at all. When I'm on the streets and notice something cool, there's never an explanation of the artist's intentions - at least not with guerilla pieces like Banksy's. And even though Banksy very clearly uses his work to spread his messages, I prefer the message to be open to personal interpretation instead of being summarized by some art professors who think their opinion is the only right interpretation. I genuinely dislike such practices and since lack thereof is what got me so interested in street art, I didn't like seeing signs telling me how to interpret Banksy's monkeys, rats and anti-war pieces.


After about two hours, we'd seen the entire exhibition. We also quickly walked through the Roy Lichtenstein exhibition on the ground floor and in the basement. You don't have to pay separately for the exhibitions, so we mainly took a look because we'd already paid anyway. Roy Lichtenstein is known for his pop art pieces. I usually love pop art, but wasn't too impressed with the works on display there. I personally preferred the gift shop in the basement, because that's where I finally got my hands on a new book about Banksy's career. There was also a lot of clothing with his works on it, but since I'd already bought some in Bangkok, I went for postcards instead. They're now on my postcard wall, which was severely lacking some street art images.


I left the place in a great mood. Along with all the stuff I bought, my boyfriend and I got a Wish Pin, which we could stick in the new installation in the museum's garden. They're now at the bottom of a gigantic egg made from cork. And of course I made a wish while pushing it in; it's a Wish Pin after all. The whole thing made me happy, from the art to the book to the Wish Pin. I hope you get to experience the same thing if you get the chance to visit the Laugh Now exhibition at Moco in Amsterdam.

Back when I took my first insecure steps into the world of street art I had no idea how hard it is to actually create something that's not butt-ugly. Apart from that my first attempt ended with me almost shitting myself and realizing spray paint is a difficult medium; I'd accidentally painted my entire hand a Satanic shade of red and the paint had dripped all over my stencil. Street art was hard.
About a month later I got my hands on four Bunbun stickers when I did a street art tour in Utrecht. Spreading them was easy, a quick way of adding some color to the world. As I worked on Mission Bunbun I started to appreciate sticker art more and decided to give it a shot while I tried to find out where to get some proper spray cans that wouldn't make me look like a demon. Soon I started designing stickers. It was the start of a new era in my street art life.

To be honest, I had no idea how to design a sticker. Sure, I can draw, but I didn't know how to turn a sketch into a digital design. No, I didn't think about googling that information. I'm old-fashioned and was lucky enough to find a graphic design magazine at the local thrift shop that explained the whole process step by step. Now I just needed a design. I leafed through my old sketchbooks in hopes of finding some inspiration. That's where I saw an image of a cloud puking a rainbow. I converted that sketch into a digital design.
Even though it made my best friend and me laugh, I didn't love this sticker idea. It wouldn't surprise me if some people in the gay community would be offended to see their symbol as puke, so I put that idea on hold. You never know what kind of backlash something silly like this could get online and I didn't want to step on any toes. I didn't want to go through with a design I if I weren't behind it for 100%. Then one day, out of nowhere, I got the perfect idea in mind. A butterfly, but with my name on its wings.


Two weeks after hand painting this design on a purple piece of paper I had a stack of 150 stickers in my room. I was completely in love with them, but also a bit insecure. My stickers aren't the average street art sticker: they're shaped like a butterfly with the word Envy on them in swirly letters, clearly made by a girl. But it was my design and I was proud of my slightly psychedelic stickers. Soon they popped up all over my hometown and the center of Rotterdam. And when summer came, I took it to the next level: I took my stickers with me to Southeast Asia.

While working on Mission Bunbun I'd developed this technique of putting a sticker in the palm of my hand, slapping that hand softly against for example a lamp post in passing. Quick, efficient and not too obvious. Still I was a nervous wreck when I did this at Schiphol Airport right in front of a police van (which I hadn't noticed until my dad pointed it out the minute I vandalized a lamp post). Not the start I was hoping for on my biggest streept art mission to date, but things were much easier on the stop-over in Helsinki, Finland. The only thing that was difficult here was keeping myself to the sticker limit I'd set myself to each country. I couldn't take as many stickers with me as I wanted, that's just one of the downsides to backpacking, so I had about four stickers for Finland, Thailand, Laos and Cambodia each. On top of that I wanted to leave one behind in every city I was going to visit. That was no problem in Finland though, as I only visited Helsinki. There I broke the sea of Rock Church stickers with my Envy butterfly, left one on a bridge near the ferris wheel and put them up on a pole at the bus station and the airport. No problem whatsoever. The real challenge began in Thailand.


Bangkok was full of street art and I couldn't wait to add a little something to the colorful mix. Before I knew it I was down to one sticker, after already taking one from the stack that was meant for Chiang Mai. I had to leave one more sticker in Bangkok, I just had to: I'd found Ox-Alien stickers on a lamp post and really wanted one of mine to be next to one made by my favorite Rotterdam based artist. As I reached out, aiming for a spot next to the Ox-Alien on the lamp post, standing on my toes to reach it, I spotted a police officer in a very important-looking uniform on the other side of the road. I panicked, hoping he wouldn't notice me vandalizing his city. I lost my balance, missed my mark and my sticker ended up half on top of the Ox-Alien sticker. I didn't give myself time to feel bad about it; I quickly walked away before the police officer could come over to see why the weird white girl had fallen over for no apparent reason.

Sticker slappin' in Chiang Mai proved to be a lot easier, but again my stack had disappeared before I knew it. After my jungle trek I sat down with the alarmingly small amount of butterflies I had left. I knew I was going to go to Luang Prabang and Vientiane in Laos. Hopefully I'd move on to Phnom Penh and Siem Reap in Cambodia afterwards. With that plan in mind I put three stickers aside for each city except for Siem Reap, where we'd probably only be for a day or two to visit Angkor Wat. I was ready for the Lao part of my mission.


Laos made it easy for me to put stickers up. No one gave me weird looks, no one frowned at me, nothing. Now that's usually my goal, but in Laos it's apparently socially accepted to put stickers up everywhere in broad daylight. It made my mission so much easier. Luang Prabang got some Envy butterflies on lamp posts on the bank of the Mekong River. They looked lonely there, as there was barely any street art on the Luang Prabang peninsula. In Vientiane I decided to give my stickers some company, which is why I left one on a traffic sign next to a sticker of a yellow dancing elephant. My favorite sticker location of the entire mission is the lamp post in front of a book store in Vientiane though. That action left me with one sticker less for Phnom Penh. No regrets though. Once a bookworm, always a bookworm.

When I said 'no regrets' just now, I should have said: 'I regretted it a little.' The Cambodian lag of my mission now came down to only three stickers: two for Phnom Penh, one for Siem Reap. Again I left a sticker on the banks of the Mekong river, now in Cambodia's capital. I put it on the flag pole with the Dutch flag on the boulevard. Then the entire mission was over before I knew it. I was proud of myself: I'd made my own street art stickers and had left them in eight cities in five countries over the course of two months. But that wasn't enough.

Half a year has passed since my biggest street art mission yet ended in Cambodia. Since then I've put a few more up in Rotterdam, but I need more. Not just more cities and countries to leave my stickers in, but also more colors. I'm thinking blue and red butterflies. And I definitely need more stickers to continue my mission - because if there is one thing I learned from my sticker rationing this summer, it's that you can never have enough street art stickers with you.

On Saturday morning my dad and I got on the bus to Rotterdam. Whenever map-reading comes into play with one of these routes I drag my dad along, because he's good at it and I did not inherit his path finding skills at all. Of course I could have relied on the digital version of the map and GPS, but I was almost out of data for the month and my dad is better company than my phone.
We got off the subway at Oostplein, not too far from the first poster. Of course I walked right into the wrong street, because I knew that one from Mission Bunbun, before my dad told me I was going the wrong way. Soon I found myself photographing a fluffy chameleon-like animal on the wall of a supermarket. As I stood between bikes and bicycles to see it from up close, an elderly couple passed me by, expressing their confusion at what I was doing. Then they noticed NixNix, the chameleon, and said to each other: 'Look how cute that is.' It made me pretty happy to see these older people noticing and appreciating art that's usually frowned upon by their generation.

My dad didn't have to drag me out of the wrong street again when we started our search for the next two posters. These were easy to find, as they were both underneath the iconic Kubuswoningen. They're also very clearly marked on the map, so it took little effort to find Ówiger. This little dude just looks so awesome between all these tags. On the online map I read up on his bio. Not only does every single one of these creatures have a name, the artist has also written their bios and tells what inspired her to create them. They all come for the daydreams she's had while walking through Rotterdam, which makes these little creatures look right at home in the city centre. The artist's aim is for people to start daydreaming more. This is how Daydream010 came to be. I'd only seen three of her 'daydreams' so far, but couldn't wait to see what was up ahead.

The seed for my street art obsession was planted in Slovenia. It grew and grew in the Netherlands. Then all of a sudden I had a ticket to Bangkok and a plan that'd lead me to Laos and Cambodia as well. At that point in time I only knew a little about street art in Thailand because a Dutch artist had just been there. Laos and Cambodia were a total mystery. Was there even a street art scene there? I had no idea, so I set out on a mission to see what kind of street art Southeast Asia has to offer. Come along and explore with me!

Thailand

Upon arrival in Bangkok I learned it wouldn't be difficult to find street art in Thailand. Khao San Road is full of stickers from artists from all over the world - it took me about five seconds to find a Dutch Ox-Alien sticker. Tags were literally everywhere, but for guerrilla pieces you need to check out the docks at the klongs, the channels in Bangkok. Boat rides on the klongs are a big thing among tourists, so you can be a typical tourist while checking out local artists' work.


The city is a real goldmine with commissioned pieces scattered all over the place. There is one enormous wall near the Oasis Hostel which was a collab between Ox-Alien, Edo Rath and Thai artist Alex Face. I'd hoped to find this wall because I'd been seeing it on Instagram all Spring long, but cried happy tears when I found it literally a few hundred meters away from my hostel.


Now I'm always a bit more excited about Ox-Alien walls than any other pieces (what can I say, I like bright colors in bland cities), but Bangkok had so much more in store than just some walls from an artist I knew from back home: the old library that was being renovated had loads of murals. The streets in the Khao San Road area surprised me in the best way possible.

After leaving Bangkok for Chiang Mai I wasn't sure I'd see any more good street art. My doubts turned out to be for nothing: Alex Face has also been to Chiang Mai. If you want to see his work you have to explore the streets just outside the old city walls. Old Town Chiang Mai is beautiful, but the street art inside these walls is a little harder to find. Don't worry though, if you take a walk around the outside of the walls you'll see plenty of art without even putting in any effort. Unlike the pieces in Bangkok, Chiang Mai's art is local for the most part.


Thailand was an allround street art success. Which isn't surprising, considering that the country organizes plenty of (international) street art festivals. This year the city of Pattaya was filled with murals. Sadly I didn't get to see those, but that gives me a good reason to go back to Thailand some time.

Laos

I arrived in Laos after one day in a van from Chiang Mai to the border, then spent two days on the slow boat. On my third full day in Laos I set foot in Luang Prabang, where I finally had the chance to see Lao street art - if only there'd been anything to see.
Luang Prabang was weirdly clean. There was the occasional sticker here and there, but no big pieces. Barely any tags. Almost nothing at all. I refused to give up on Lao street art so easily, but things didn't get much better when I went to Vientiane. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that Laos is a communist country. The only big mural I saw was a commissioned piece with so much communist symbolism it made me cringe.


Laos is more of a sticker country than anything else, probably because stickers on telephone poles and lantern posts seem to be the main way of advertising stuff. You can put them up in broad daylight and no one even bats an eye. My favorite sticker was one of a yellow dancing elephant. No interesting mural though: spray cans are strictly used for this kind of stuff.

Cambodia

After a slight disappointment in Laos, Cambodia's street art was a big surprise. Cambodia had everything: stickers, pieces, tags, stencils, everything! Cambodia doesn't really know what to do with street art though. It's waging a war on graffiti while organizing the occasional street art event at the same time. As a result, walls that have been painted during a festival are white washed a few weeks later. This made finding street art in the capital Phnom Penh difficult: even if someone posts a picture and location online today it might be gone tomorrow. Cambodia street art has en extremely short life span, even for street art standards. Keeping your eyes open is a must, and you also need a bit of luck. For example, I never would have spotted this amazing piece if my hotel hadn't had a rooftop bar and pool.


On street level the art disappear within the blink of an eye. It was a stroke of luck that a few pieces hidden behind food carts caught my eye when I was on my way to the Killing Fields. When I went back there I noticed a weird pyramid shape which I'd seen in Bangkok as well. Next to it was a slightly unsettling stencil, the one of only two stencils I saw in Southeast Asia. I had faith in Cambodian street art as I left Phnom Penh and continued my journey towards Siem Reap.


Siem Reap wouldn't be what it is today if it weren't for its close proximity to Angkor Wat. There isn't much to see and do there, yet it had one thing I didn't see in any of the other places I visited: a Hall of Fame. Along the river a construction side that's been boarded off has now the biggest Hall of Fame I've seen since my visit to Utrecht.


There are so many pieces here, but this on was my favorite. As you take the tuktuk from Angkor Wat back to Siem Reap you'll see more pieces by this artist - all bright, colorful and beautiful.


Wandering around Siem Reap will not lead to disappointment either. Illegal pieces in Cambodia are a lot more hidden and harder to find than the ones in Thailand (probably because of the frequent white washing), but they're there if you don't walk straight past dark alleyways. Gotta give my dad props for finding this one.


My four weeks in Southeast Asia were almost over when I left Siem Reap. I returned to Europe with a camera full of street art pictures, a head full of Southeast Asian street art facts and quite a few scraps of paper I'd stuffed into my pockets after putting my own street art stickers up while hunting for the best pieces of this part of Asia. Because how can you love street art this much without making the world a little more coloful yourself? Maybe I'll give you an insight into that adventure as well, but for now let's enjoy one last Southeast Asian street art picture.