This month’s travel schedule has meant that I am late posting images taken during celebrations to mark the Year of the Rabbit. The day after it all took place, I headed off to Laos for a whirlwind tour of the south, taking pics for a forthcoming book.

Having just returned, I’ve hastily sorted through a few shots taken at night in one of Bangkok’s many Chinatown temples.

 To be honest, the celebrations in the daytime, and mingling with the masses waiting to politicians to make an appearance didn’t do a lot for me so I decided to return in the evening when the whole event is far more atmospheric.

Thousands Thai- Chinese visit temples in the area throughout the day and night to make merit, light candles and incense, and receive blessings from monks.

Chinatown is one of Bangkok’s most historic areas and was originally settled by Chinese traders during the Sukhothai era.  According to local superstition, the long winding Yaowarat Road resembles a dragon’s body and is therefore an auspicious place to conduct business.

The most convenient way to get Chinatown is to travel on the MRT underground to Hualampong Station and then get a tuk-tuk or taxi.

As a destination for a weekend or extended break from Bangkok, Chiang Mai is hard to beat. Despite the fact that the city has experienced far too much uncontrolled development in years and suffers from bad pollution, I still have a deep affection for Chiang Mai. In fact I lived there for about six years, so know it extremely well.

With a dirt bike at my disposal for the weekend I took a blast up to Doi Suthep, a 1600 metre peak that overlooks Chiang Mai. It is also home to the famous temple, Wat Pra That Doi Suthep. The 15 kilometre journey is a winding rollercoaster ride, superb on a motorcycle.

The temple is incredibly popular with Thai visitors to the city who go to pay respect at what is generally regarded as one of the country’s most sacred religious sites. Once you reach the car park and market at the site, there’re 306 steps to tackle in order get to the actually temple. It’s definitely worth the climb but try to go as early as possible to avoid the crowds.

At the temple, it is tradition to walk around the golden chedi three times before lighting incense and a candle, and offering a lotus flower to an image of Buddha.

There are plenty of nice details to pick up on through the lens.

Getting there:

Chiang Mai lies 800 kilometres north of Bangkok and just over an hour away by air. Thai Airways and Air Asia fly direct whereas Bangkok Airways fly via Sukhothai.

The overnight train from Bangkok’s Hua Lampong station to Chiang Mai makes for an interesting and considerably cheaper travel option. The air conditioned carriages are comfortable and the train also features a restaurant car. Of the two trains that travel the Chiang Mai route the Nakornping Express is recommended. Be sure to book in advance and ask for a bottom bunk. They are wider and more comfortable that the upper bunks.

I was in Chiang Mai at the weekend on a photo assignment and took a ride to Bor Sang, about 10 kilometres outside the city. The town is renowned for making umbrellas from bamboo and saa paper. On Saturday and Sunday the annual umbrella festival was taking place. This involves lots of typically Thai fun, music, dance and parades.

A bevy of young beauties from the local school were performing a dance routine on Sunday afternoon and I was made to promise that I would post a few pictures on the website.

There were also demonstrations of the art of umbrella making and painting.

There are dozens of workshops in Bor Sang producing umbrellas for the local and international tourist market.

It was a good opportunity to capture some visually striking images for a book I am working on about Thailand.

I have just returned from a long weekend in the town of Ayutthaya, one of the most culturally and historically interesting towns within easy reach of Bangkok. Thailand’s former capital is a must on any travel itinerary.

Once praised by foreign emissaries as the finest town they had ever seen (at least according to Tourist Authority of Thailand it was), today many of the ancient ruins have now been encroached upon by the new town resulting in a typically ramshackle Thai approach to preservation. Indeed the site was given UNESCO World Heritage status but I heard that this may be at risk due to the over commercialization of areas within the park with souvenir stalls and so on. The town certainly does get overrun with foreign and local tourists eager to buy the tat on offer but I see no reason way it can’t be kept away from the temple sites. But this is Thailand after all – the land that never let heritage get in the way of making money…

Ayutthaya was founded in 1350 by King U-Thong. During the 14th and 15th centuries the Thai kings of Ayutthaya had built the town with three palaces and over 400 temples. By the mid-16th century Ayutthaya was sacked by an invading Burmese army and, along with Lanna in north Thailand, came under their control.

 Although Thais regained control of both areas by the end of the century, the Burmese invaded Ayutthaya again in 1767, fighting and winning a fierce two-year battle. Many of the temples were destroyed.

Situated approximately 86 kilometres from Bangkok, Ayutthaya can be reached by car in little over an hour, by train in 90 minutes (in theory at least. My trip on the way there took three hours), and by river.

You can see a few more images from Ayutthaya in the Thailand gallery.

Of course, the downside of photographing Thailand’s main attractions is the inevitable temple and Buddha image overload. I’ve been traipsing round the major sites in Bangkok including one of my favourites, Wat Pho.

Also known as Wat Phra Chetuphon, Wat Pho is one of the finest temples in Bangkok and renowned for a huge reclining Buddha housed within a beautifully decorated hall. The 46 metre long and 15 metre high image was constructed in 1832 during the reign of King Rama III.

Designed to illustrate the passing of the Buddha into nirvana, the enormous feet feature mother-of-pearl inlay decoration showing the 108 auspicious characteristics of the true Buddha.

The inner and outer galleries  are lined with 788 Buddha images, the largest collection  in Thailand, and stone carvings of Chinese figures. Wat Pho is also a centre for the teaching traditional Thai medicine and massage. King Rama III instructed that the temple should become a centre of learning and had traditional knowledge inscribed on stone slabs.

It is practically impossible to enjoy the temple without hordes of tourists but if you get there early you can grab a few quiet moments.

I’m currently working on a couple of book projects and photographing to an agreed list of attractions around Thailand. It’s an interesting process because I am having to tackle subjects that I would normally not bother with. Of course, it is also a great way to build up a good stock of images.

Last night I went down to Hua Lampong Station, the hub for all rail travel in Thailand. Located on the outskirts of Chinatown, the grand old station is a reminder of an age when the train truly revolutionized travel within Thailand. From here, tracks stretch northwards to Chiang Mai and east into Issan, where the line divides at Nakhon Rachasima, with one line running up to Nong Khai and onward over the Laos border, and the other heading for Ubon Ratchathani. A shorter branch line also runs from Bangkok to the town of Aranya Phratet on the Thai-Cambodian border. Train enthusiasts and historians can travel west to Kanchanaburi, the site of the famous ‘bridge over the River Kwai’ and Hellfire Pass, or use the line to travel south to reach Thailand’s islands and beaches. Moving along at an unhurried pace, the comfortable carriages pass through the royal resort of Hua Hin and its beautiful old station and then on to Chumphon, Surat Thani and Hat Yai. From here you can even continue by rail on to Kuala Lumpur and Singapore.

Construction of Hua Lampong Station started in 1910 and it opened for service on June 25, 1916. It’s a beautiful sight when lit up at night.

No, the heading’s not the title of a long lost album by the late great Theolonius…

I was recently in Hua Hin doing a few reviews for the Bangkok Post and while there managed to snap a few shots of monks collecting alms on the beach.

In recent years, the once sleepy royal resort town of Hua Hin has awoken. As the location of the King of Thailand’s summer palace, the town has always courted favour with wealthy Bangkok Thais but today, it’s not just city types slipping away for a weekend of clean air and fresh seafood. The town is squarely on the map as an international holiday destination.

Just 200 kilometres south of Bangkok on the west coast of the Gulf of Thailand, Hua Hin is easily accessible by road, rail and air. Although the boom in business, hotels and housing has meant that the town has inevitably lost it sleepy feel, Hua Hin has managed to retain its charm and is free of the sleaze that plagues many of Thailand’s other beach resorts.

The majority of the five star resorts are pushed up agaimst the beach. Rise at day break and you’ll see monks returning to temples further down the seafront, stopping to collect alms as they do so from locals and tourists. It’s a photographic opportunity too good to miss.

Thailand’s annual Loy Kratong festival was held on Sunday, the night of November’s full moon. I did hope to spend an evening enjoying the atmosphere and getting dozens of shots but I wasn’t really in the mood for it.  I ended up with just a few – enough to get me out of trouble.

During the evening, millions of people across the entire country go down to the nearest river to float their kratongs, small rafts made from a banana palm and decorated with flowers, a candle and incense. They believe this will bring them good luck throughout the year. In more recent years the gesture of floating a kratong has also become closely associated with romance so I bought myself the most beautiful kratong I could find and watched it float away, carrying my love to Klong Toey.

In Chiang Mai and the north, the festival is known as Yi Peng and lanterns are released into the night sky. This tradition has also now been adopted in Bangkok.

Thailand has a stunning variety of street food. Towns teem with stalls serving a bewildering array of culinary delights. Any visitor to the country is strongly advised to occasionally forego the flashy restaurants and opt for a cheap and cheerful street treat.

Dining street-side in Bangkok is an extraordinary experience, a feast for the eyes as much as it is for the stomach. I was recently asked to do a set of images for a restaurant. It was decided that the shots should be close-ups. It is still a work in progress but here’re a few examples.

Thailand is often described as a ‘food culture’, a statement that implies that food is more than simply sustenance but central to almost every aspect of social life. One only needs to wander down virtually street to realise just how true that statement is.

Almost everywhere, enterprising vendors have regular pitches on the pavement, many specialising in one particular item, while others are able to turn their hand to a bewildering amount of dishes. Yet they all have one thing in common, the food they serve is cheap, tasty and ready in minutes, the very definition of fast food.

Whether you are looking for a quick alfresco breakfast, a full-blown lunch, a tempting in between meals nibble or something to soak up the ale after stumbling out of a bar, the street vendors have it all, 24 hours a day.

 One of the most frequently heard greetings in the country is ‘kin khao yang?’, or ‘have you eaten yet.’ Thai people are communal diners and grazers, seldom eating alone and never satisfied with just one dish. After work, street stalls swarm with office staff and the air is filled with the irresistible aroma of dozens of different dishes, the fiery waft of stir-fried chilies, lemongrass scented soups and grilled meats.

Although the typical Chinese noodle or chicken and rice stall is still very much part of Bangkok’s culinary street scene, the majority of the street traders come from the northeast of Thailand, economic migrants from the hot and under-developed Issan. As part of the Asian tiger economies much of the Thailand’s boom time growth and investment during the early 90s focused on Bangkok, by-passing the rural areas. Resilient and hardworking, Issan people moved in droves to the big city to work as taxis drivers or as labour on construction sites, bringing with them their distinctive music, culture and of course, food.

Street vendors provide a great service and create a very special atmosphere, not only within the environs of Bangkok but across the entire country. The price of food is kept low due to minimal overheads; most pay a small fee for their pitch to shop owners if they are in front of a business and a weekly backhander to the police.Vendors are such an integral part of Thai life it is hard to imagine the city without them. Bangkok authorities, who have said that they believe there to be over 43,000 street stalls throughout the city, declared Monday to be a vendor-free day. It is then that you truly realize how much the city’s character is defined by these amazing roadside chefs. Yet their wonderful cooking and easy availability of cheap and tasty food is increasingly threatened.

In recent years occasional campaigns by the authorities have attempted to remove them from certain areas, blaming them for contributing to traffic problems or stating that they are a nuisance for pedestrians. When international dignitaries visit the country stall owners are often banned from selling on the street in order to ‘clean up the city and create a good impression’.  Keen to create and enforce the rules and regulations that blight western nations, the authorities seem oblivious to the fact that most visitors love to see and sample the remarkable food.

The Thai Red Shirts turned out in Bangkok this morning for the first show of strength since the bloody crackdown by government forces in May. Several thousand gathered at the Ratchaprasong intersection to mark the fourth anniversary of the coup that ousted former PM Thaksin.

A shrine was also set up to honour those shot on the 19^th May this year when armed forces dispersed anti-government protesters.

The crowd was in good spirits, singing and chanting for the government to get out, with only the occasional skirmish with police when a few reds tried to block the road. The police have said they will allow the Red Shirts to stay at Ratchaprasong until 8 p.m. today. It seems to be an agreement that will be honour by the reds. When I jokingly asked a few demonstrators if they were here for the day or the next two months, they assured me it was only for the day.

The picture above shows a Red Shirt supporter holding up an image of Seh Daeng, a revered leader of the movement who was assinated in May by a sniper while being interviewed by a journalist.

 Several other demonstrations are going on around the country. There is a large gathering in Chiang Mai, a pro-Thaksin stronghold. There have also been reports that the Interior Ministry has called for counter demonstrations with some 50,000 supporters of the ‘Monarchy Defence Network’ taking to the street in several provinces.

As usual, there were plenty of colourful characters – literally – at the demonstration.

Of course, Thaksin also put in an appearance.

Divisions in Thai society are clearly as strong as ever. In all honesty, given the propaganda being churned out by the political machine, constant crackdowns on freedom of speech, and the censorship of over 113,000 websites (more than China), it’s hard to remain positive about Thailand’s democratic future.