Color Palettes- Cambodia & Thailand

It’s 36° and the moist air hits your face. There are more smells than you can count and even though you are wearing linen clothes you feel sticky after being outside for only five minutes. Sounds familiar?

Then you’ve probably been lucky enough to visit Cambodia and Thailand. For an entire month I travelled through these fascinating countries and explored cities such as Bangkok, Chiang Rai, Angkor Wat and Siem Reap, slept near rice fields, watched elephants and had the most wonderful time.

Color seems to be the thing that brings me enormous joy when visiting new places, but also when romanticizing everyday life. So it should come as no surprise that the color combinations I got to see while traveling through Asia left me nothing but inspired and curious.

Intense hues of red

I am a huge lover of bold colors - and I definitely came to right place when visiting Southeast Asia. From the striking red taxis to lawn chairs at the local markets, bold colors - especially reds- were seen everywhere.

Fun fact: In Thailand every day of the week is associated with a specific color, as every day is protected by a specific goddess. For example, Red would be the lucky color for a Sunday, Monday would be Yellow. People might not dress according to what day of the week it is, but most people will know their lucky color according to the day they were born.

Red also symbolizes prosperity and is often the color of celebrations. As the Chinese New Year is widely celebrated across Asia, you will see lots of Red decorations during that time.

When it comes to food stands and snacks it’s always a festival of colorful hues. From eye-catching neon tones to reds, oranges and greens, the colors are maximalist statements, guiding the viewer to a variety of snacks that are a must try when in Asia.

Between artificial flavors - and the colors to match - there is always lots of different fruit and veggies to choose from, adding a natural element to the circus of colors going on everywhere. I especially love how the products are combined with colorful umbrellas and handmade signs!

The temples

When travelling through Thailand and Cambodia you will come across so many beautiful temples, it’s incredibly hard to choose your favorite. Thailand’s temples are mostly Buddhist temples, decorated by hand in jewel tones from gold to warm yellow and orange tones. Often there are some touches of pink, turquoise and green, which seamless add into the colorful yet majestic experience.

Streetlife

If you like to experience colors, you will be amazed by the street life in Cambodia and Thailand. I loved the colorful scooters that everyone was riding around with and this pink one in front of the beautiful flowers was just too good to be true. I guess you could do an entire color guide to Thailand just by photographing the different scooters, taxis and tuk tuks riding around. It’s beyond lovely to see so many colors on the streets, whereas our modes of transportation here in Germany look pretty boring in comparison.

One thing that also struck me was the way people colored their buildings and homes. Southeast Asians are not afraid to go bold when it comes to painting facades which is just so refreshing. I adored the blue gas station we discovered in the middle of nowhere, close to the rice fields outside of the city Chiang Mai.

From flowers, real or fake, to scooters, exteriors and lots of colorful details around the streets, there is so much color to discover!