I recently got back from another trip to Thailand and just think, wow, what an amazing place! The food, the people, the colours, the scenery, all add up to an amazing, phantasmagoric adventure in a land where everything is done so differently than elsewhere. Thanks to low-cost carriers, this time we flew from one place to another at not too much additional cost from our usual night trains/buses, which take so much time out of the trip. We might wake up one day by misty mountains and the next by crystal-clear, emerald seas.

Of course, I took a retinue of photo gear along for the trip, with the emphasis being on finding the right balance between image quality and weight/bulk. Usually this would have meant a combination of DSLRs and compacts, never really being able to rely on the latter, but getting something ‘better than nothing’ from them. Thanks to Micro 4/3, though and also to the new crop of smaller DX DSLRs, I was able to have a much tighter ‘daily kit’ with some very flexible lenses. My setup was basically my Nikon D5100, with a couple of primes and my trusty 18-105mm. For back-up I had a Panasonic GF1 I picked up the day before we left, with its excellent 14-45mm kit lens and the stunning 25mm f/1.4 Pana-Leica I already had. I’ll say a bit more about my choices in my next post, to spare non camera-geeks from it all, but suffice to say, I was very happy with both the variety and lightness this setup gave me.

A Tuk-Tuk ‘motor-tricycle’ taxi driver takes a break by a busy Bangkok street.

So, back to my trip, where did we go? We started off in Bangkok, hot dusty and Cosmopolitan, though more recently graced with beautiful shopping malls that are more like theme parks and a fast sky-train to navigate the city. Overall, my favourite moments are strolling through night markets to see all the goods on offer, from jewelry and Angry Birds t-shirts to fresh fruit and riding boat-buses through the city to riverside temples, like Wat Pho, with its enormous, graceful reclining Buddha. Seeing the astonished looks on people’s faces as they encounter it for the first time is worth a million and it probably is one of the wonders of the modern world, which I don’t think anyone should miss.

Golden Arhats (disciples on the way to full enlightenment), in Wat Pho Temple, Bangkok.

From there, we went to Chiang Mai for a short trip, where we explored the temples, including an incredible golden one in the mountains overlooking the city, from where you look down to clouds billowing like candy-floss along the green valley. There was some elephant trekking, white-water rafting and a Thai cooking course thrown in. I love the fact in Thailand everything is so accessible, we signed up for these things the night before and had a fantastic time with all of them.

Green hills overlooking Chiang Mai.

Then came the most ‘paradisiacal’ phase of our trip, with about a week in Phuket, including a few days spent on Phi Phi island, said to be one of the most beautiful islands in the world and definitely the most beautiful I’ve even seen, though based on my travels, it has to share that honour with Japan’s Matsushima. We were pretty careful about accommodation here, as after reading reviews we found a lot of it is very sub-par, but can definitely recommend s sea-view room in Phi Phi hotel as an affordable and unforgettable experience. If there are other places like that, I’ve yet to find them.

Approaching the beautiful islands of Phi Phi.

Lastly there were a few days in Bangkok, for shopping, massage and more dining, including a great variety of delicious foods and fruity drinks. Whilst I’m happy with kai yang (roast chicken, usually barbecued on the street) and papaya salad (a spicy,sweet and crunchy salad made with unripe, green papaya fruits), it was a treat to have Tai-suki (the Thai version of sukiyaki) and all kinds of exotic desserts as well.

A singing store-keeper. Bangkok, for all it’s noise and bustle, is a city full of life.

For me, Thailand is still simply the most exotic country I’ve been to. Whilst there are other places that are probably better to travel in simply because they are less touristy and hence less touched by development and commercialism, for fun and adventure Thailand still stands out for me as a place I’ll probably always want to go back to.

Dawn breaks over Phi Phi Island.

Now I have around 7,000 photos (!) and some video clips to sort through, taken on sea, sky and land and pretty soon I hope to post up some of my best shots, including some HDRs and panoramas that need processing. It’s kind of a shame with digital photography that you end up with so many redundant images (especially, I find, when a zoom is involved and you ‘experiment’ with different focal lengths), but I am glad to have the freedom to capture what and how I want. We now have easy access to some excellent gear, that whilst not being perfect, can make for very memorable images without making traveling around too burdensome in terms of lugging things around. I was glad to actively enjoy where I was and capture it, even on the fly at times!

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