The flight back on Wednesday was early, leaving Da Nang international at 9:35 and arriving back at Don Mueang international in Bangkok an hour and a bit later, although I wouldn't arrive back at the hotel until 2pm which is the default check in time. Any ideas that I had about going out and looking for photo opportunities were quickly put to bed. I had struggled to stay awake on the 30 minuteminu ride from the airport to Victory Monument. On the BTS and MRT lines I had struggled to lift my bag high enough to clear the gates, instead having to ask the guards on duty if they could open the wider barrier at the edge of these obstacles to allow me to pass through unhindered. I was caked in sweat, partly through my new found illness of course and compounded by the heat that had elevated noticeable during my time away. As soon as I found myself in an air conditioned room my body and mind urged me to lie down and resr for a moment. That moment pretty much ate up the rest of the day.
On Thursday I decided I had to get going and packed up enough camera equipment to carry me through the day. I intended to go to Silom, a place I have stayed in the past and easily accessible from my current location using the MRT subway line and have some breakfast before moving onto to the Khao San Road area to scope it out in the day. Khao San is a place that comes alive at night, but I wanted to do a test run when it was quieter, so get a feel for the layout and try and identify the areas worth returning to. Before that however there was Silom.
I wanted to get some use out of the 135mm lens that I had been carrying, the Carl Zeiss Jena. This is an old manual lens and I have said before that it can be a little bit testing to use sometimes, the 135mm and lack of Autofocus meaning that it can be difficult to hit the mark a lot of the time. The pay off however is that if that mark is hit, it is my opinion that this lens can give results that few others are able to match. In Vietnam I had been looking at the work of Saul Leiter and had been inspired by some of the work that I had found of his. He had his own style and it was his personal work that came to light later in his life which was kind of my penny drop moment. I had been putting a lot of pressure on myself to get the shots that I though that other people would like as well as pleasing myself. Shots that I could build a either a single body or multiple bodies of work from in order to get the best mark I possibly could from my final degree module. Maybe I needed to go back to what I do naturally. Wait, watch, identify, react, shoot and perhaps even more important than anything else, do something I don't feel I have been doing with my photography for a little while, enjoy. I spent an hour in the sweltering heat of Silom, in and around the Sala Daeng BTS. By the end of this period I was feeling physically drained, the Zeiss however had proved itself yet again to probably be one of the best lenses I have ever, ever (and one more for luck), ever used.
I contemplated not carrying on to Khao San Road at this point. Even though it remains one of the most popular tourist spots in Bangkok there is no direct line on either the BTS or MRT. In order to get there from my location I would need to get the BTS to the river and then catch one of the ferry boats up to the area of the Grand Palace. From here I would then have to walk the rest of the way in a place that I wasn't all that familiar with. At the front of my mind however is that ticking clock, the countdown is on and ever encroaching so I pushed on.
The river boat trip takes about 20 minutes and even even under the beating sun, the space and air of the river provides a degree or two drop over the confines of the city. after that however it was back to the drain. My legs were heavy as hell, my energy levels were flat and it seemed that if I could find any little imperfection on the walkways to trip or stumble over I would do so and there are very few perfect surfaces in Bangkok. I found areas where there was little shelter to hide under and walked routes I had been before, getting flashbacks in certain places from events I had witnessed in the past. The familiar areas were still similar enough for me to recall bits in parts, but enough changed had happened that I never found myself completely sure of where I was. But after 5 years this change could just as much be down to my once reliable memory being less reliable also.
Khao San Road itself was wide, with enough people musing up and down to make the trip worthwhile. I walked up, and then down as the afternoon drew to a close and the vendors began setting their stalls, politely declining the advances of the many smartly turned out tailors that want sell you a fitted suit, looking up and around to familiarise myself with my surroundings for a future visit before returning to the river to begin my way back to the hotel before the light had dissipated completely. Again though the lens proved its worth. It's old manual functionality getting the most out of my part working a7ii. Who needs to worry about the inability to control the aperture with the rear dial on the camera when you have a mechanical wheel on the lens that will do this just as well.
The ferry boat ride just after 6pm coincided with the sun setting over the city, and this provided the perfect backdrop one last opportunity that presented itself. As the boat gently rocked against the choppy river waters, we past some of the sights of the city baked in the evening glow, but my eyes weren't being drawn that way. For me it was how the light was catching the young monk who was watching the riverside pass him by, the orange of his robes occasionally highlighted through the lens, occasionally muted by flare and optics. Religion is a big part of Thai life but I had only seen a few monks up until this point, and few of these made good images. Here however, this changed.
The next day (Friday) I found myself feeling completely wiped out. I had over done it the day before obviously so the was no real option other that accept this and retire myself for the day, only breaking cover from the hotel a couple of times to get food before returning to the to room to do photo editing and the like. The effort on the Thursday had been worth it though and had been productive in a few ways, but it was mainly that it had produced a good number of usable images in a relatively condensed period of time, and I had started to enjoy myself again.
very short vietnam clip
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