In Bangkok, freshly killed beasts arrive in the markets at around 3 a.m. It’s common for groups of vendors to club together and hire jobbing butchers who prepare the carcass for them. I recently went to a market in the early hours to watch a butcher prepare a whole cow in less than an hour. It’s a challenging situation in which to take photography; poorly lit with florescent lights, hot and with a lot of deft hook and knife action. When the job is done the meat is shared between the vendors who sell it from around 5 a.m. This is a daily process, with the exception of Buddhist days of worship or wan phra when the butchers don’t work.

I love my neighbourhood. I have a choice of half a dozen fresh markets in the immediate area and many more if I care to travel just a little further.

Every day around 5:30 I take a stroll down to one of them and make the difficult decision of what to buy for my evening meal. It’s usually a curry of some sort, a fish and a vegetable dish, bagged up to take home and enjoy with rice I cook at home.

I’m lucky in that on a Tuesday and Friday the local temple holds a market which includes a vendor selling some of my favourite hard to find northern Thai dishes plus some tasty southern food.

There’s people frying pla tu, grilling shallots and garlic for nam prik, and much more. The variety is astonishing and my dinner for three dishes seldom costs more than 100 baht.

On Sunday, there’s an abundance of Lao and Issan ingredients and plenty of fresh vegetables.

It’s interesting to see the current trend on Bangkok’s restaurant scene emphasizing local produce and ‘authentic’ dishes….and charging a premium for it.

On the streets of Bangkok it has always been so, and it will continue as long as the authorities don’t interfere with market and street vendors, or force them off land to build another bloody mall. I don’t think this fantastic food scene should be taken for granted. It needs protecting.

Want to eat local in Bangkok? Make it part of your daily life. Get down your neighbourhood market.

A perfect day for me starts by getting up at the crack of dawn and heading off to an unfamiliar part of Bangkok where I’ll  wander the streets and alleyways, camera in hand in search of food shots.

And so it was on Wednesday morning.  Rendezvous 6 a.m. on Lan Luang Road, the neighbourhood of esteemed  cameraman, Eric Seldin, who had invited me over to look around his local market. Like myself, Eric has shunned the likes Sukhumvit and chosen to live in a local district of colourful characters, atmospheric markets and  great street food.

The Lan Luang area in home to Nang Loeng, one of the oldest fresh markets in Bangkok.

There’s also a warren of side streets to explore with people cooking food to sell in the market at lunchtime.

Part of the fun of these ‘foodie photo walks’ is getting lost and making discoveries, that, if any of my other wanderings are anything to go by, I may never be able to find again…

Of course, the reward for a productive morning’s photography is to sit down in a noodle shop and enjoy a good breakfast before heading home.

In this case bamee haeng, egg noodles and red pork.