Lady Sunset..

For months now I've had an image in my mind that I wanted to capture. I'd think about trying to set it up at least every week or so yet in amongst the busyness of life I discovered that months had gone by and I was still repeating the same ole mantra to myself'; "next week.. next week.. next week.." It was while drinking my morning coffee a couple of weeks back that I noticed the fields behind my house were beginning to make the shift from impossibly green to a warm golden hue and I knew if I kept up this mantra and didn't act soon then my window of opportunity to shoot in amongst the rice fields would be gone, and that was something I was not prepared to let happen.

I asked amongst some friends if they'd be willing to let me shoot them and sold them on the concept of the shoot and was pretty jived when they agreed. Part of my vision was to have a background in which the setting sun was just kissing the mountain tops and so on a couple of afternoons at around sunset I rode around the outskirts of town location scouting. I thought I had settled upon a place but randomly one afternoon when I was picking up Wildfoot and Little Feather from their school, I decided to take the long way home and as we rode the scenic route through fields upon fields of rice just ripening for the harvest I knew I had stumbled upon a far more beautiful space.

I came back later that afternoon and wandered around the fields looking for interesting nooks and crannies and points of interests that I might want to include. The whole time I was keeping my eye on my watch so I would know where I needed to be at what time to get the most of out the rapidly changing light, but at times it felt almost pointless. I challenge anyone to try and focus or to make plans while walking through those fields at sundown! The whole afternoon felt like I was walking around in a dream. The soft breeze blowing across the top of the rice fields that created ripples which stretched out all the way to the base of the Himalayan Foothills while the sun gently settled down behind the mountains and smothered everything with an impossibly gorgeous golden light. If I'd had a picnic blanket, a bottle of red and my wife I believe I'd be well in my right for thinking that I'd died and gone to heaven.

 I rang around and locked in a day and a time for the shoot. I even managed to convince my friend's eldest son to come out and be my lighting guy/voice controlled light stand and this move ended up being one of the the best 60 baht I've ever spent! But on the morning of the shoot things didn't look anywhere near so promising. The weather was overcast and cold, the wind was kicking up a stink and the sky was continually threatening to rain. Living in a valley means the weather is always unpredictable and so there was always a chance it might come good, but because the weather report said it was likely to rain I opted to postpone the shoot till the following week, a risky move considering the difficulties in getting all my friends there at the same time coupled with the unknown date of the impending rice harvest but ultimately it was the right one.

The days rolled by and thankfully the rice remained unharvested. Everyone turned up for the shoot and it was like God had been saving up the most beautiful weather he had ever conceived of just for that day. The golden sunlight was otherworldly and helped give a real milky quality to parts of the images that I was hoping to capture along with the occasional bit of lens flare. I fired off a bunch of shots in different locations and tried to capture a variety of moods (as well as a number of individual portraits which I'll upload once I've had a chance to edit them) and walked away with a digital copy of the image that I'd been seeing in my mind's eye for months in advance (the first image on this page) and that is a sweet feeling indeed!

The final noteworthy part to this story came the following day when Shoonklicky Spoon went for a ride back to where we shot these images only to find that the fields in their entirety had been cut down in the harvest. Not more than than 12 hours after I captured these images the harvesters arrived and put their sickles to work. If ever there was a time I was grateful to have gotten off my butt and made something happen, this is likely to have taken first place!

Sunday Sun..

 
Of all the genres of photography, portraiture is my favourite. Don't get me wrong, I love rambling off road to try and find a unique perspective for a landscape, I love capturing candid moments in street and travel photography, and if all my friends here continue to be under the spell of this strange new desire to watch birds, I might even try my hand at wildlife photography, but without a doubt my photographic heartbeat is for capturing people. Is it that I'm by nature a people person? That people seem by far the most complex, diverse and beautiful creatures on our planet? That attempting to capture the essence of a person on film (or more to the point, my interpretation of that person's essence) seems an almost transcendent pursuit? I truly don't know, but what I do know is that right now I'll take any opportunity I can to stick my lens in someones face and capture a frame full of the beauty of the world.

Out Of The Flying Pan..

It was an afternoon like any other. The kids were playing, the wifey was reading, I was in the kitchen baking cookies (ok.. so whilst that was actually true, it was likely the first time this scenario has ever played out in my house!) when we all heard the metallic thump and raced to the window. Out the front of our place on the entrance to our driveway sat the car in the below image in a rather precarious position.

The driver had been cruising down the road when he came head to head which a bunch of workers who were upgrading the road and found he wasn't able to pass. Because the road is so narrow and on each side there is a significant drop into either the fields or the storm water canals, he reversed back along a hundred or so meters to our driveway with plans of swinging back into it to turn around. Unfortunately for him, he cut it waaaay too sharp and ended up resting in a nasty spot with one tire hanging off the edge in no-man’s land.

I ran out of the house and jumped our hedge to check that he was ok (and thankfully he was) and quickly found I was at a loss for how to help. By myself there would be no way I could give him the push he’d need to get back onto the road and without knowing Thai well enough, I relied on my pretty superb charades skills (refined after many years living in cultures where I didn't fully speak the language) to tell him to sit tight while I went in search of help. And as it turned out, he was in luck! 

Our Landlady was doing some renovations and it just so happened that there was a truckload full of Thai construction workers on the property willing and eager to follow the hairy white guy acting out what a car looks like when it falls on it's side.

The six of us took our places behind the car and I loaded my shoulder in against the boot in preparation to push. In my minds eye I could see us heaving mightily enough for the tires to find some traction and as the driver turned his steering wheel and eased on the accelerator he would gently cruise back into the center of the road. From there we would guide him safely back into the middle of our driveway and then off he'd go. It all seemed too easy.

"Saam, Song, Nung, Pai!" ("3 - 2 - 1 - Go!")

I shoved my body forward putting all my weight into it and with our combined strength could feel the car lifting and slowly moving forward. It felt stable, steady, under control, but alas, the feeling was all too fleeting. In an instant the sound of the engine jumped from a low rumble to a thunderous roar as the driver slammed the accelerator against the floor and within seconds the tires grabbed hold of solid ground and off he went, screaming across the road and careering straight off the other side.

He hadn't turned his wheel so as to go back along the road. He hadn't planned enough space to adequately stop. In a moment of madness he just planted his foot on the gas hoped for the best.. and the best alluded him.

It was all done within the blink of an eye and I immediately felt like I'd fallen out of synch with reality. Seeing a car leap off the edge and smash down into the concrete storm water drain isn't something you see everyday, and in my mind that was surely not what was suppose to happen, but after a second or two of realising the driver hadn't opened his door I was struck back into reality with the fear that he could have really hurt himself. 

I bolted across the road and jumped on the ledge. Grabbing a hold of the handle I threw open the door where the driver sat pressed up against the dash board, one foot in the air, looking sheepish and shocked but not injured, when he looked deep into my eyes and in a sheepish thick Thai accent spoke words that I will treasure forever more;  

"Out of the flying pan.. and into the flyer."

The seriousness of the moment seemed to dissipate in the face of this wonderful summary of events and I had to bite down on my tongue so as to not laugh. Thai's don't pronounce the letter 'r' but instead replace it with an 'l' and thus left me with the gem of a statement. I grabbed a hold of his arm and pulled him from the vehicle much to his embarrassment.

Within the hour reinforcements arrived to lift his car from it's resting place and with only a couple of moments of craziness they managed to haul it off. Wild Flower was worried about the driver and how he was coping. She voiced her concerns with our landlady with some expectation of offering a hand or doing something kind to help him out but for the second time that day we received a response which will forever live on in our families vernacular. She turned and in a very serious tone said "Oh, don't worry about him, cause he is Lich, leally, leally Lich." 

 

Play For Nepal..

Back in 2012 we lived in Nepal for a few months while we waiting for our visas to be renewed for India. We had these grand ideas for how we would spend all of our time there but as often the way, life had other plans. My Little Feather was badly ill and so we spent more than a month in Kathmandu (more than twice as long as we had planned) in order to stay near by to some decent medical care and whilst that was a super trying and difficult time, the real upshot was the extra time we got to spend working with a local NGO. They were working with women and children who'd been rescued out off Sex Trafficking through providing homes, job training and schooling and as Wild Flower's degree was in International Aid & Development she was able to lend a hand in some amazing ways. The relationships we built with the women and children (heart crushingly many as young as 4) and particularly the Nepali family running the NGO were really beautiful and continue along in our family and I still proudly display their Gurkha blade they gifted to us when we left in the lounge room of my home.

 

For us here in Pai, most of the people in our community have either traveled to or spent a period of time living in Nepal and as so many of us have friends and family there it's been hitting quite close to home with all the horrible news and footage coming out of Nepal of their recent earthquakes.

It was in that climate of shock and sadness that we all decided we wanted to do something to support and brothers and sisters in Nepal and raise some cash and prayers. The Caveman had been previously tinkering away with an idea of hosting a variety night at our community space and getting performers in from all over Pai and when the news of the earthquakes reached our ears and the idea of turning it into a fundraiser was broached, well, the two seemed destined to be.

 
As with what feels like most of my life these past few years, the straight forward and simple path to running the night seemed to allude us all. We'd been thinking about it for a while and it finally felt like the right time to install the sound system in the Salah (the main gazebo/building) and so spend most of the afternoon getting it and the lights wired for the evening. It was midway through this process that a giant storm cell hit Chiang Mai and off went the lights, wifi and most importantly - fans! The storm had knocked out the power to the whole of Pai but unlike Banaras where power cuts could literally last days, here the longest we'd experienced was only 2 hours and so with more than double that before the beginning of the night we had very little concern.

But alas, as the time to begin came and went and we were still without power we raided our Candle stock piles and lit the place with every candle we could get our hands on. And.It.Was.Beautiful! For half the night I walked around wondering whether I even wanted the power to come back on as the ambiance was so sweet but with it also came the somber reminder of those in Nepal who are still without power and the substantially harder problems they face because of it.

But roughly half way through the night the lights did indeed come back on all throughout Pai and from every direction could be heard the unified shouts of "Woo Hoo!!" During the interval we set up the mics and did a quick sound check before Shoonksworth took to the stage to performed a gorgeous piece with her Tampura and prayed for Nepal.

Then Wild Flower, Dizzy, myself and the true star of the show - Little Feather - joined Shoonksworth on stage for a Bhajan. For me this was undoubtedly the highlight of not just the night, but the year!! I got to play with some precious friends, my wife (for probably only the 2nd time ever! So proud!!) and for the first time with my daughter (so so sooooooooo proud!!). I found myself just looking back and forward between them the entire song and the sight of Little Feather strumming along on her Ukulele and singing at the top of her lungs filled up my heart beyond capacity! I'm one lucky man!!

 
The only other notable moment was about half way through our song when the storm hit Pai and the gale force winds began blowing the rain sideways into our Salah and onto us and the sound system. Sometimes you just can't win hey! But with the sweet sound of my daughter's little voice in my ear I was in too happy a place to have minded.

 
At the close of the night after witnessing amazing juggling acts, guitarists, story tellers, jaw-harpists, tampurists, fire dancers and even a poet who offered an ode to his balls - yes you read that right - we counted up people's donations and ended up raising 11,469 baht to go to Abari who build natural housing structures to provide relief to communities and victims of disasters. Which when you think about it, from only 52 or so 'budget' travelers, +11k is a pretty fantastic figure!

So a huge thanks to everyone who came to be a part of the 'Play For Nepal' night at Shekina Garden! Whether you donated, performed, or just came to lend your support we want extend a heart felt thank you!!

And if you're reading this and haven't already, maybe now is a good time to consider opening up your hearts and even more so your wallets to support the relief effort in Nepal! Cause in the right hands even just a small amount can go a very long way to changing someone's life! 

Should We Be Concerned About This?

The Nighttime View Behind My House

 

That was the question the Russian tourists asked me as I stood on the dirt road beside my house; "Should we be concerned about this?" And to be honest it was hard to know how to answer. The Australian in me sees a mountain covered in flames and wants nothing more than to grab the family and the photo albums and get the hell out of there (bush fires in Australia are a big deal!) but the man slowly acclimatising to the Thai way of life understands that this is normal, that's right, a mountain less than a few minutes from the town center is covered in flames and it's normal. In fact, it's deliberate.

Every year between February and March the landscape around here disappears beneath a thick layer of smoke the permeates e.v.e.r.y.t.h.i.n.g. Plenty of people will tell you that it's farmers burning their fields before the new planting season but to date I'm yet to see a single field that's been scorched. Instead what we saw each and every night on the hills and mountains that surround us was what is here referred to as "Fire Dragons;" those lines of fire that slither their way up and down the sides of the mountains, and all of which on uncultivated land.

Fire Dragons

  

If you asked around to find out what's going on with the burning you'll discover that it's that familiar scenario in which everyone in town has a differing story which they believe to be THE true one. I've heard that it's back burning to guard against bush fires, that it's part of an ancient agricultural ritual, that it's to encourage new growth in the forest, and plenty more which each have the possibility of being true. But the one told to me by a local guy that seems to ring true is that it's all a part of the Hill Tribes hunting technique.

Each year around this time they release the Fire Dragons to blaze along the mountains and force all the animals of the forest to run for 'safety,' and with the fire at their backs the animals run straight into the path of the hunters who are laying in wait. I am partially convinced of this because of what I saw on the night that I was photographing the fire dragons from a distance but decided I wanted, no, I needed to get closer to get "the shot." 

I hoisted my camera gear on top of my motorbike, kissed Wild Flower goodbye, took a few deep breathes to work up the courage to head up a mountain that was covered with fire, then charged off into the darkness. After a good 10minutes of riding back and forth on small trails trying to get as close to the flames as possible I ended up dismounting my bike and continuing on foot. After only a hundred or so meters I came to realise that whilst the flames were broad and hot they were actually quite slow moving, almost dawdling along to take in the sights. None seemed to be climbing up the trees or setting the canopy alight but instead were slowly eating their way along the extensive underbrush and leaf litter and so I felt reasonably safe walking to withing 30 or so meters of the flames before walking back a ways to get some wider panoramic shots. It was in the process of shooting the 4-shot panoramic below that I noticed a handful of Thai guys wandering around near the flames with torches and what was possibly (though I can't be 100% certain) rifles. Seeing this made me think that if these guys are out illegally hunting in the forest, and I, a hairy foreigner with his camera tripod that in the darkness looks suspiciously like a long legged creature of the forest, perhaps hanging around was not in the best interest of my health and safety. And so with that in mind I stealthily and swiftly made my withdrawal.

 

.. "The Shot" ..

Whilst the sunsets, scenery and ability to breath deeply had all but disappeared during the last months, Pai magically still managed to maintain it's beauty and charm despite being shrouded in an opaque veil of smoke. A good friend described the nights here as "Apocalyptically Beautiful" and whilst I'd happily trade it for a crisp, clear, star filled nights sky, at the end of the day I have no problem admitting that there are definitely worse places than my veranda to settle down with a cool drink in hand and watch the ever encroaching end of the world.

Live & Uncensored..

Let me just get this out there - my daughter is a delight! Her heart overflows with kindness, her mouth gushes with sweetness and affection, and she possesses an empathy for others that is way beyond her years. Lately this precociousness has served her well as she settles into our new life in Thailand and the poor little thing commences learning her 3rd language in her very short 4 years on this planet. But I'm not sure if it's a result of growing up in multilingual environments, that it's simply her personality or most likely that it's just spot on for her age and development, but lately her a speech has been flush with this raw literalism, comedic non sequiturs and genius linguist inventions (which around here we refer to as speaking "Elkish") that have had me in stitches! It's gotten to the point where I've decided it'd be a sin not to share them as they're simply too good to waste. So with eternal gratitude to my incredible daughter, I joyfully present to you some highlights from the last month of 'Little Feather; Live & Uncensored.'

  

"Mummy, Mummy! I just saw a car spraying water out of it's bottom."

"Don't worry Daddy, Jesus will put the sick away from you."

"Dad, whenever my poo comes out it makes me cold, or warm, or hot."

"Daddy, yester-night when we went over the bridge the moon dipped itself in sauce and that's how it got orange."

"Dad, at school the peepee from all the doodles gets all over the ground and I don't like it very much."

"Daddy, Daddy! I saw a water fountain and it spat out a rainbow!"

"Dad, do you remember the fish with jelly on it? Wobble wobble wobble?"

"Mum, why do you love wearing chicken?"

 

  "In night times Daddy spews in the potty.. Silly Daddy."

"Daddy, Daddy!! What's that noise upstairs? I think it's a Dinosaur! Or Mummy!"

"Daddy, I need a band-aid to put on my finger so the Germans don't get in and make it ouchie."

"Daddy, last time I was sick you forgot to bring me a bucket and all my vegetables came out onto the bed."

 

India Just Doesn't Love You..

 

“India just doesn’t love you man. And that’s why it hurts so much cause you love India, but no matter what you do you can’t change the fact that India just doesn’t love you. Thailand on the other hand, Thailand doesn’t care who you are, Thailand just wants to give you a hug.”

This was it. This right here was the quote of the night, the perfect summation of how I was feelings, the nugget of truth which seemed to make everything else clear. You see I was spitballing with a good friend who has also spent a number of years living in India but now lives in Thailand and it was becoming abundantly clear that he too was privy to India's dirty little secret. You see India (and Banaras especially) has this nasty little habit of not letting you go quietly, instead, it drives the boot in deep and kicks you out. I don't know why, perhaps she's upset you're leaving and so lashes out like a child who doesn't quite yet understand the depths of her own emotions or how to control them, or perhaps she wants you to carry a scar with you throughout the rest of your days so as to always remember her by. But you can ask any number of the folks who’ve gone before me and sure enough they'll have their story of woe to tell from the time they finally decided to pack up stumps and leave India. With this knowledge in mind I went into our final month with my eyes wide open and heart braced for impact. I did my best to be prepared and so I emailed friends and asked their advice on what best to do and what to avoid, I made plans with Wild Flower that allowed plenty of time to accommodate for unforeseen set backs, I even had 3 Aussie friends who came along with us just to help us with the pack up and move. But somewhere in amongst all the busyness and preparations I allowed a tiny crack in my armour to appear from which the belief that I might just get out unscathed began to leak in. Needless to say..

I was wrong.

The new Termite mound in the bedroom cupboard & the Caveman giving it hell..

When we first walked into our home that had laid empty for six months while we were back in Australia we were hit with an immediate sense of dread. We had paid someone to come in and do a some cleaning from time to time but as with many things in Banaras it turned out to not be money well spent. The place looked like it hadn't been lived in in centuries. Mold, dirt and an inch of dust lay across the surface of everything, and I do mean everything. And then there was the termites, oooooh the termites! I went to unpack some clothes and put them away in my draw but as soon as I began to pull on the handle I knew something was amiss. Usually the wooden draws would slide out somewhat gracefully on their metal runners, but this time it didn't budge, not even a little. I tried tugging again; nothing. I tired putting my back into it; nothing. I put one foot on either side of the draw and reefed back on it with all my might; nothing. My good friend the Caveman and I ended up going at it with saws, hammers, chisels & screwdrivers for almost an hour before we got it open and then roughly another hour per draw before finally having unfettered access to our wardrobe and clothes draws (9 draws in total!!). The swelling of the wood during the monsoon coupled with the colossal infestation of termites (check out the football sized mound that was in our cupboard in the above image) had made the draws harder to get into than Fort Knox and set us way back in our packing. There it was - Kapow; right in the nuts. I figured this was it, this was Banaras' goodbye..

I was wrong.

Little Feather Deliveries..

I've been riding motorbikes in Varanasi for a number of years now and rarely, if ever, do I encourage other people to do it. My old man's been riding bikes most of his life and skill wise he may very well be a superior rider, but when he was visiting us here last year I asked him not to ride, not because I doubt his skill, but because I know he didn't understand the Indian road mentality. And if you haven't paid your dues and spent sufficient time on the roads here then how could you?

I equate the roads here to the ultimate game of Tetris except instead of the pieces only coming one at a time and only from the top - they come from every direction all at once and move in every direction with regular changes and with no notice; sounds challenging right? And in my last week of living in Banaras as I was peacefully riding through a roundabout a young kid on a bike pulled across in front of me and stopped dead in his tracks and I found myself coming off my bike for the first time. I managed to avoid the kid altogether - at the expense of hammering the brakes and fish tailing into a heap on the ground – but the kid rode away alive and I rode away with a grazed leg, bruised ego and busted rib. Surely this was it! My first and only accident! Just enough to make me grimace in pain every time I lifted anything heavy - and considering the amount of heavy lifting I was about to undertake while moving most of our worldly possession from Banaras and Pai that amounted to quite a bit of grimacing! Kapow; right in the nuts. Surely this was it, this must have been Banaras' goodbye..

Again, I was wrong.

Can always rely on Wild Flower to capture me at my best..

Within days of being back in town the first indicators of sickness were becoming apparent throughout my whole tribe. Wild flower was complaining of a nasty throat pain, little feather and wild foot both began to have a constant stream of fun pouring out of their noses and my asthma was going haywire. By the end of our first week the entire family was struck down with the flu. Needless to say, with only a short amount of time to pack up and sell the majority of our worldly possessions coupled with getting in decent time with all our friends, we had no time to lay about in bed and ride it out, there was work to be done and we had no choice but to push through it. But on our very last night in Banaras things jumped up a notch. The kids were in bed asleep and I went for one last walk along the ghats to pray for this great city and drink in the atmosphere one last time. I came across one of my favourite spots and sat upon the stairs that used to frequent and I began to experience a terrible pain in my sinus. For days the pain had been growing in intensity but as long a I didn't exert myself to hard or throw my head around to fast the pain was minimal, but tonight I was in agony! I tried to push the pain out of my mind, knowing that this was my last chance to enjoy the ghats, but a fter an hour it became unbearable...and I was forced to retreat home. I spent my final night in Banaras not with my friends, not at my favourite spot, but with my head between a towel and a pot of steaming water whilst regular blasts of pain rocketed throughout my cranium. In terms of ways to spend your final night in Banaras, this one was not on my list. Exhausted, in pain, still with plenty to do, finally this was it, this must have been Banaras' goodbye.. But as by now I'm sure you're learning, again...

I was wrong.

 

Almost everything we own in nine bags..

It was midday when we arrived at the airport with tear stains down our cheeks, mountains of baggage loaded on our trolleys and heavy hearts. I was feeling pretty wired considering the previous night and the three flights and three days of transit that lay a head (not to mention that our taxi driver had fallen asleep at the wheel half way to the airport!! Aye aye aye!!). But we were there, we had made it over our first hurdle, our flight was in a little less than 3 hours and that would give us plenty of time to process and get any last farewells out of our system. But why then was the guy at the check in counter being so evasive with me? Why was he telling me I had to go to the Spice Jet office in the back of the airport? Why wouldn't he give me any boarding passes or any straight answers?

Wild Flower stayed with the kids and our friends while I walked into the Spice Jet office and handed over my ticket. The first guy looked at it and told me to go to the guy at the desk, the guy at the desk looked at it and told me to go to the guy I'd just spoken to, the first guy then told me to go to the check in counter.. I stared at him and demanded to know what was up. And that's when it happened. That's when I felt the warm embrace of Banaras' bootstraps as they plowed straight into the family jewels.

"I'm sorry sir. Your flight is cancelled."

Kapow.

 

The waiting game..

The adrenaline burst was instant, my mind catching up with everything that was going on might have taken just a tad longer. "When's your next flight?" I asked. "None today," was the reply, which of course is of no use to me when I have another flight out of a different city tomorrow morning. "When was it cancelled?" I sputtered. "Three days ago," came the reply. "Then why wasn't I told?!?!?" Turns out that because I had booked our flights months in advance (while we were still in Australia) they had therefore sent a text to my number in Australian to notify me that my flight from Varanasi to New Delhi had been axed.. gee, thanks! And part of booking so far in advance was so I could get this great deal they had going on excess baggage (which of course we had lots) which was now redundant. 

I burst out of the office and let Wild Flower know what had just happened. I then snuck in through the back door of the Indigo airlines office and began showing photos of my daughter to the guy at the desk (listen, if you have white daughter with blondish hair and you're traveling in Asia then do yourself a favour and have her photos handy as they can and do move mountains!!). This managed to get him to stop serving the line of about 20 people waiting in front of him and thankfully secured us some seats for a flight later that night, however it did nothing to bring down the monstrously high excess baggage fees which might mean that we'll now be eating Ramen noodles three times a day for the next five to ten years! But thankfully forty-five minutes and a whole lot of sweating bullets later I returned to my little tribe with boarding passes in hand and together we began our painfully long wait.

The waaaaaaiting game..

Two flights and twenty-four hours later and we dump our bags on the hotel floor in Bangkok. It has been a long, looooong day and the kids pass out immediately in their beds yet Wild Flower and I are still wired, still on India time and still starving. She disappears into the night looking for food for us and returns 30minutes later with a two white plastic bags and a startled expression on her face and tells me I need to sit down because "I'm not going to believe this." I sit down on the bed and feel the familiar wave of anxiety wash over me as I cover my crotch and brace myself for what I anticipate to be India's final swing. What will it be? Did we loose a bag in India? Did I leave my wallet on the plane? Has our credit card have been hacked (again!)? Wild Flower's eyes go wide in amazement and she begins saying;

"We found a little roadside place that had noodles but the people there didn't understand a word of English. We were trying to get some without any pork in it but literally nothing was getting through. Then this Thai guy who was probably in his 40's just walks in out of nowhere, starts talking to us in decent English and helps us order our food! Then we had a nice little chat with him while they were making our dinner and I told him that we were moving here from India and then when our food comes out we asked him how much it costs and get this! He says 'Don't worry about it, I've already paid for your food. Consider this a welcome to Thailand gift from me to you and your family.' Then he just turned and walked away!

Finally enjoying our back porch with friends..

So if it didn't hit home the first time let me close by repeating it again;

“Thailand doesn’t care who you are, Thailand just wants to give you a hug.”

Fishing In The Post Apocalypse Mall..

The Mall On The Other Side Of The Apocalypse..

On one late Autumn night in March 2014, I was huddled up on a couch in Australia and killing time on my computer when I happen to stumble across a comment on a Facebook thread that would immediately crawl in under my skin and make itself at home. Someone had heard a rumor about an abandoned shopping mall somewhere in Asia that had flooded and subsequently become home to a large population of Koi and this person was looking to find clues to it's existence and possible whereabouts. I eagerly followed the thread hoping to learn more but found that as the comments slowly dried up I was left hanging with no concrete information, no photographic evidence, no first hand accounts.. nothing but an explosion in my mind at the thought of the possibilities and burning desire to find out if this place really existed. Cue the inevitable sleepless night that followed filled with the pounding of various word combinations into Google until finally I happened across a grainy, pixelated, low-res yet outstandingly exciting image and the name that accompanied it; New World Mall, Bangkok, Thailand.

As I poured through various websites and my eyes grew wider with excitement at the various images a thought suddenly hit me like a steam train and for a moment I held my breathe as the sound of my heart beating in my chest began resounding in my ears. As many of you know, after many years living in India we're relocating the beautiful mountains of Northern Thailand and so between mid-October and mid-November we doing some traveling, a lot of traveling, including journeying from Australia to Thailand, Thailand to India, India to Thailand (and then in December Thailand to Laos to Thailand.. don't ask!) and that during this time we will be passing through Bangkok on at least two different occasions. I furiously opened up my travel itinerary and there it was, a 17 hour stopover in Bangkok between connecting flights on our way to India! If I could track this place down and organise our timing just right, I might actually be able to step foot inside it for myself!! The thought immediately caused my heart rate to double.

New World Mall, Bangkok..

 
Seven months later and the thick, heavy, humid air was filling my lungs as I hurriedly pushed my way through the masses along the sidewalks of Bangkok. After much research I had managed to track down an old address online and so booked our accommodation close by, and with the help of Google Maps in my pocket I was feeling confident that I was where I was meant to be and that I was on my way to something special. Suffice to say that after 25 minutes of walking with a growing feeling of confusion a helpful police officer was able to enlighten me that I'd been walking in the complete wrong direction since my first step out of the guest house.. niiiiiiice.

Fast forward through the long walk back and I soon found myself on the street which I knew the Mall was just off. I walked the length of it three times but any indication of a giant abandoned mall filled with fish was nowhere to be seen. Most things I'd read online about the mall were now a couple of years old and one mentioned how it was highly likely to demolished and developed at any time as it was in a area of growth and gentrification; a growing sense of foreboding and impending letdown was upon me. 

... B&W Three Shot Panoramic ...

From what I could gather online, it seems that some years back a brand-spanking-new eleven story Mall was being built in downtown Bangkok which would go by the name of the New World Mall. The unforeseen Global Financial Crisis in 2007-8 meant that the funds to finish the project dried up and soon after the doors closed on a half finished Mall. But the story doesn't end there, oh no, the eleven story mall was being built in an area where the zoning regulations prohibit construction above the seventh floor and so when the council came in and knocked it back down to it's seventh floor they opted to not bother with putting a roof on. This one act of a leaving a completely exposed and roofless mall meant that when the monsoon rains arrived they fell into a perfect reservoir and over time came to completely fill the bottom floors. With Malaria and other Mosquito borne diseases being a problem throughout Thailand, the story goes that a local man released a handful of fish into the waters to eat the Mosquito larvae and as this was an artificial watercourse which therefore had no natural predators in it, the fish thrived and began to multiply.

But this is where I come back into the story. You see I was standing on the corner of a small and completely nondescript alleyway that was filled with plastic tables and chairs and one or two of street food vendours, the same alleyway I had already walked across the mouth of 3 times, when I I saw the Krungthai Bank logo, the landmark I was searching for, and realised I was precicely where I was suppose to be.

 
I began walking down the alley and could see that less than 20 meters a head of me the alley ran into a wall and became a dead end. Two-thirds of the way down on the right however I could see a large wire fence covered in green shade cloth running parallel to the wall, the type of fence you put up around the outside of construction sites when you want to keep people out, and smack bang in the middle of this was a gate with a handwritten Thai sign which even as a foreigner I could tell said 'Do Not Enter!' My heart began pounding harder and harder as I stepped closer but I wasn't able to even get within a couple of meters of the gate before an elderly Thai man grabbed my arm and regaled me with the universal hand gestures for 'You can't go in there.'

I asked as politely as I could (currently being a non-Thai speaker this wasn't quite so easy) if I could just pop my head in quickly but he kept waving me away. I know the Thai word for 'Fish' and so I pointed to the gate and said "Plā" and the old man and his friend nodded vigorously yet with even more vigor they waved me away. He picked up a rather large piece of concrete from the floor and gestured that it had fallen from the roof, he then repeatedly tapped the top of his head - now after three years in India I've gotten pretty flippin good at charades (you should see me trying to ask my neighbors if they've seen my wife's bra after it's blown off the clothes line on our roof) and so I knew he was telling me that it wasn't safe for me to go in because  the roof/walls/giant pieces of concrete were liable to fall on my head. I appreciated his concern but yet found myself standing at the crossroads in which one direction meant to walk away and miss out on potentially seeing something amazing whilst the other was to stay and try and change the minds of these immovable objects/gentlemen without having any grasp on the language at all. I opted for the latter.

I began by using the few Thai phrases I knew; "Hello, my name is...," "I am .... years old," "I come from ...." etc. etc. etc. But it had little effect. I dug deeper into my memory bank and came back with "I like Thai Food," then I smiled real big. Both gentleman smiled politely and waved me away. I had pretty much exhausted my repertoire of Thai sentences and so was force to reverted to single words. "Fish. Buffalo. Monk. Temple. Bottle Water. Airport. Left. Man. Traditional Hats." That slightly sideways quizzical look began taking over the old mans face so I continued; "Child. Right. Little. Novice Monk. Elephant. Symbols. Snake... Pad Thai!!" The corner of the old man's mouth began to tremor and slowly raised into a smile. Success!!
  

First Floor; Women's Hosiery..

He began chuckling and so I kept on repeating my random assortment of Thai words and he turned slowly and led me up and through the gate. From the street side of the gate the opaque green cloth obscured all vision of what was on the other side but within one step through the gate the attached photos were all I could see. It was astounding. There was no long walk, no scrambling through tunnels, just one step through a wire gate and I was standing in the place that had been dominating my mind for months on end. What's more, literally millions upon millions of people would pass within a handful of meters of this place each year and yet the vast majority would never know it existed. To be so fortunate was rather humbling.
 
I'm not sure of what breed of fish they were (fairly sure they weren't Koi - at least not a breed that I'm aware of) but goodness me they were huge and numerous! Hundreds and thousands of amazing dark Blackish-Blues and Albinos splashing around in this cavernous underground wonderland. And when the old man began hitting a metal pipe that protruded from the water with a stone the fish turned and almost uniformly began swimming towards us whereby he reached into a bag and threw a mass of pellets to them which they swarmed over and devoured in an instant. I whipped out my camera and began shooting in what was a massively tricky lighting situation, and though deep down I'd love to go back and improve on these images, I'm happy enough to have come away with a handful of keepers. The old man began pointing at the roof above me and I could see where large slabs of concrete had become dislodged and fallen all over the floor, within 2 or 3 minutes since first entering he again he grabbed my arm and this time I knew it was the right time for me to leave.

All in all it was one of the more exciting and surreal moments of my life. When I burst back into the guesthouse and couldn't stop my lips from pouring forth the longer (and exceptionally more boring) account to Wild Flower (but she's a great woman and an even better wife so has learned how to put up with my ramblings) and I was riding the high for days. So if you ever find yourself in Bangkok and want to hunt down one of the most amazing places on earth make sure to get yourself to Banglumphu Junction on Samsen Road (walking distance from the main backpacker district of Khao San & Ram Buttri Road), find the Krungthai Bank (big blue sign with a white eaglish-hawkish-birdish logo) then keep your eyes pealed for the small and easily missable Soi Kraisi, turn right into it and look for the green netting a stones throw away on your right. The only other advice; just make sure to have your list of completely random and completely unrelated Thai words at the ready.


* Dedicated to my ole boy Ragnar - It's not Kolmanskop, but it's getting close!