Yaowarat, Bangkok’s Chinatown, is many things all at once.

It’s crumbling walls. It’s stacked neon signs. It’s colours upon colours. It’s stuffing your face past the point of being full because it’s Thai tea slushie and it’s dumplings and it’s just one more and I’m done. It’s feeling slightly guilty that the locals are hustling to make ends meet and you’re just on holiday with a camera. This time it was finally stepping into Wat Mangkon, the temple of the same name as the MRT train station that you exit from to get here. Incredibly easy to miss, it seems, but all teh more reason to seek it out.

Most visitors arrive for the food night market, which sees Yaowarat Road’s pavements packed with selfie-takers and street food vendors, as taxis and tuk tuks continually roar through under the neon canopy.

I recommend morning street photography there too, with locals coming into the area to eat breakfast, buy their groceries, trade gold, and pray at the temples and shrines. The place is less performative in this mode, just people living their lives, and as a photographer, it feels comfortable to capture images here because a tourist is a common sight.

Here are some recent images taken in Yaowarat, from when things are just starting to get going in the morning through to the neon-lit evening.

Check out how Yaowarat looks during Chinese New Year here.

More images are posted regularly on my Instagram here.