Travel Essays by Simon Slater
The warm weather is falling with the leaves here in England, but that’s no reason to stay indoors, especially in a city like Bristol. It was a pleasure to show 22-year old Italian Deborah Di Bartolo around for the painted city’s outdoor galleries on a typically overcast day that cleared up once we approached Cabot Tower, a century old piece of architecture looking out onto the kaleidoscope of foliage and the city beyond.
For the past year I’ve been mostly based in the south coast town of Weymouth, England, in an area known as ‘The Jurassic Coast’ for it’s ubiquitous prehistoric fossils.
Ever since King George 3rd’s sixteen consecutive summer beach vacations made Weymouth a popular British getaway, Weymouth and it’s UNESCO World Heritage coastline is a constant source of attention from outsiders.
With its thatched roofs, cream teas, salty sea dogs, buckets and spades, donkeys, ciders and ales, folk music, fish n’ chips, crumbling cliff tops, green-carpeted patchwork fields, old-school children’s rides, mobility scooters, obese tourists, salted caramel ice creams, yachties, Brexiteers, amusement arcades, limestone houses, sweeping views, bad tattoos, elderly coach tours, hello moi luvvur, badgers, Punch and Judy, deckchairs and healthy doses of sea air, there’s an endearing throwback appeal to this part of Little Britain.
Welcome to The Jurassic Coast…
Many cultures tend to sweep the unavoidable reality of life’s impermanence under the societal rug. In the central highlands of Indonesia, the Torajans (‘People of the Mountains’), place this tricky topic at the forefront.
Limestone cliff faces present death literally looming over us in the form of hanging coffins and wooden effigies of the deceased. Every year sees the Cleaning of the Corpses Festival, where the remains of dead bodies are dug up, cleaned, dressed up and paraded around town. There are ‘baby trees’, where infants who have passed away prior to teething are placed inside organic tombs to absorb their spirits.
But the biggest spectacles in Tana Toraja are the grand funerals comprised of towering, boat-shaped, interlinking structures which are temporarily erected to host these multi-day ceremonies. The deceased may have been technically classified as such for many years, yet they’re embalmed and kept in the bedroom of their family house as if they are still alive until enough money has been gathered.
Buffalos, pigs, even dogs can be bought to these events. Traditionally, the spirits of the sacrificial animals are believed to usher the deceased human spirit a safe passage toward the afterlife. The wholesale slaughter is also considered a display of social weight and extravagance.
Status anxiety never did have moral underpinnings, yet the saving grace of all this bloodshed is that the meat is served to attendees, nothing goes to waste. Even the horns of the buffalo eventually adorn Torajans’ houses.
The ritualistic bloodshed mixed with the stunning tropical vistas make exploring Tana Toraja like the Asian travel equivalent of venturing to Colonel Kurtz’s outpost in Apocalpse Now. It must have been quite the experience for Christian missionaries when they first arrived in the early 1900s.
It’s still a eye-opener for the most jaded of modern day explorers.
Some video footage I stitched together:
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In the Spring of 2013 I took a two week trip through Burma (Myanmar). After half a century of strict military rule, a new president and a fresh democratic political climate had made it a safe and exciting new destination on the Asian travel circuit.
Things are far from perfect in these early days of democracy. The Rohingya, a Muslim population of one million people not recognised by the state among Burma’s 135 ethnic groups, are known as the most persecuted people in the world. You only have to run their name through a search engine to see that there are human tragedies happening beyond our typically one-sided media bubbles that may be far more urgent and horrifying than what has been currently being selected for us to outrage against on any given day.
Despite this, Burma is a country finally on the rise. The people here are highly welcoming to strangers and endearingly open in their engagements with foreigners. This is made even more significant since a few years prior these same people would have been highly wary of talking to outsiders for fear of falling under the Orwellian gaze of their former totalitarian regime.
North Thailand, early December 2015.
Stumbling upon a news article the day before I arrived in Chiang Rai, I learned about The Golden Horse Temple, set on a steep limestone mountain near the Golden Triangle – the former heroin capital of the world on the borders of Burma and Laos.
The legend goes that the formerly abandoned and supposedly haunted temple was given new life after a champion Thai kickboxer had decided to retreat to a cave for seven days before becoming a monk and began to revive the monastery. His sermons were so inspiring that he was given a horse to travel to the nearby villages, where he eventually started to take orphans of the victims of the violent opium trade under his tutorage. He takes in impoverished hilltribe children to this day, children of families not recognised as citizens of Thailand, and teaches them to read and write, study Buddhist scripture, trains them in Muay Thai kickboxing and guides them in horseback riding as a way of collecting alms in the morning.
Known as ‘The Tiger Monk’ by locals, this warrior has survived shootings, bomb attacks and poisoning attempts by the drug cartels during his time at the temple. Although the heroin trade is now strongest in Afganistan, and most of the poppy plantations have moved into Burma’s Shan state, drug trafficking still goes on here.
The heavily tattooed Tiger Monk is now a revered figure among some Thais, but still keeps a low profile. In fact, when I asked about the location of the temple at a tourist info desk in Chiang Rai, they’d never heard of it, but I was able to find someone who I hired to take me there by car.
Beyond the temple of the Golden Horse, I hired scooters and bicycles from guesthouses to explore the villages, towns and cities of Chiang Rai, Chiang Mai, Nan and Phrae provinces to get a feel for the lesser-known, more rural side to Thailand, where the typical house is made of teak wood and buffalo still take precedence over tractors.
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Having paid a flying visit to Thailand’s second city previously, on my second visit to southeast Asia I planned to combine a dental procedure with an extended stay in Chiang Mai, where there are jaw-dropping temples and mouth-watering dishes around every corner, not to mention monks galore.
I happened to arrive at the beginning of a week-long annual celebration for the founding of the city known as the Inthakin Pillar Festival, centred around the ancient ruins of the pillar inside Wat Chedi Luang, Chiang Mai’s central temple complex. This brought a constant daily stream of flower-bearing Buddhist devotees from in and around the city who burned incense, prayed, and feasted on the plethora of street food amongst a backdrop of traditional Lanna music and dance performances. Lanna being the ethnic culture of Northern Thailand.
The highlight this stay was being invited to watch an ordination ceremony of three novice monks into fully-feldged monkhood. The 20-year old that invited me was the subject of the sunglasses portrait in this post, his smile masking pre-ceremony jitters. The ceremony itself is captured further down and I’m happy to say that all three of them became successfully emerged monks soon after.
The lowlight, of course, was the dentistry. Oldboy was not supposed to be an instruction manual.
I’m back again two years later, this time to take the CELTA teacher training course. It seemed like a good excuse return.
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Beyond the tourist crowds, the Hindu island of Bali remains a spectacular highlight of Southeast Asia. The fusion of intoxicating spirituality and invigorating natural beauty make it a destination that will leave it hooks in you long after you’ve left it’s shores. The Island of the Gods is truly magical.
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As much of America surfaces in a ball park, on a golf links, at a race track, or around a poker table, much of Bali surfaces in a cock ring. For it is only apparently cocks that are fighting there. Actually, it is men.
Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures
Ubud, Bali. The towering shops and bar crawls of Australia-dominated Kuta is replaced by yoga workshops, upmarket clothes shops, reiki chakra massages and vegan cafes in of the Eat, Pray, Love crowd. The town serves as a hub for western health and ethical lifestyles and a living museum to primitive culture, or at least what tourists believe to be indigenous.
The Kecak, or monkey dance, as it’s sometimes called, is performed in Hindu temples to a regular audience of camera-wiedling holiday-makers. As you may have seen in Ron Fricke’s film Baraka, the Kecak features a large group of topless Balinese males, sat layered in a semi circle, chant to a polyrythmic chrous of “cak cak cak” in hypnotic fashion. This wall of sound forms the ambiance to which the Hindu play, based on India’s Ramayana, is performed. As the play progresses, the chanting men gradually transform into monkeys.
It’s easy for us to believe we’re experiencing a portal to a deep-rooted culture from a forgotten time – it was actually invented by a foreign resident, named Walter Spies, a German artist in the 1930s who blended the pre-existing exorcist chants of the sacred Sangyang dance with imagery from Indian poem.
He then sold and packaged the show to Western tourists to be displayed in Bali’s temples and beaches, as we witness an impressively staged representation of seemingly authentic Balinese culture. Heritage tourism has become big business for brand Bali, and a massive draw for seekers of the exotic.
By combining the two separate sources, Spie’s hybrid creation was a cultural exaggeration of the primitive to generate touristic voyeurism and excitement. It’s the perfect spectacle – a visually dazzling, aurally captivating adrenaline rush with a feeling of being whisked into the past for a short time.
This isn’t the locals’ choice for a hit of spiritual engagement.
Cockfighting. These colonially-constructed cultural showcases stand in place of what used to be a less ornate, but more localized form of entertainment. Prior to the Dutch invasion in 1908, cockfighting rings used to be at the heart of every Balinese village. In fact, taxation of this bloodsport was a primary source of public revenue. They were, and still are, held on temple grounds, sometimes using the events as a blood offering to appease their gods and warn off illness, crop failure and volcanic eruptions. For this reason, on the day before Bali’s harvest season commences there simultaneous cockfights in every village on the island.
It’s technically illegal, therefore it’s an act of underground rebellion. You do not talk about Ubud Fight Club.
These men’s gatherings in semi secrecy represent an escape from Bali’s consumer culture, where mens’ warrior identities have become packaged and commodified. Here a more primal ancestral relationship to masculinity is carried out. These are arenas where Balinese men can reclaim their sense of identity, removing the colonially-constructed ideals invented for them by outsiders.
They establish this with their cocks. It’s true that a thousand puns can be made with this phallic term, but it’s also a similar sounding word in Balinese, so the joke is not lost in translation. The owners spend much time grooming their cocks, taking good care of them and show them off to a baying audience. The metaphor impossible to ignore.
Animals have low status in Bali, but in Bali’s fight clubs, men are forced to identify with their animal alter egos, as a chorus of chanting by the betting masses, circled around the main area of play bares more than a passing resemblance to the more commercialised routine of the Kecak. It’s not hard to imagine that Spies took inspiration from the energy and raw experience in these events and repackaged them for the more art-minded consumer.
Like the Kecak, It’s a focused gathering, a set of energetic local tribes engaged in continuous flow. It’s traditional. It’s very ‘cultural’. Yet if many of the health and well-being crowd from Ubud’s spa-sect stumbled upon this truly authentic experience they may be put off a return visit to the island. Maybe they’d find it tasteless, unacceptable to their Western modern standards. It would get the animal cruelty stamp. It certainly wouldn’t garner a sponsorship from one of the numerous nearby vegan restaurants.
Comparisons can be made to Chuck Palahniuk’s novel Fight Club, secret societies where geographically-diffused men flock wishing to revive a part of themselves. Fight Club saw a feminised generation of men raised by women seeking a more primal outlet to their packaged consumer lifestyle. A rejection of consumerism ,or in Bali, commercialized representations of their ancestral lifestyles, is enacted by fighting, cutting through the post-colonial counterfeits to the immediacy of living.
How much can you know about yourself if you’ve never been in a fight?
Since cockfighting has been around before the Dutch invasion, post-colonial comparisons and reasoning can appear somewhat academic. Yet it’s precisely because neocolonial Bali is firmly in place that the threads of true tradition have been led underground.
Another film that can encompasses these ideas would be 1994’s Once Were Warriors, which centres around sections of New Zealand’s Maori population that gather in pubs attempting to reclaim a displaced sense of masculinity by fighting in their ‘tribes’. This is carried out in the underbelly of a country that’s been gradually commercializing elements of indigenous culture for tourism and international representation at sports events and dance tours.
The tribal element is present at the rings here. Friends back other friends’ cocks, villagers bet on their own against outsiders and excitement is raised, along with the amount of bets, when men of high status enter the ring. This is more than quick Sunday escape – it’s a national sport, a way of life.
Some folk literally ‘bet the farm’ on the outcome of a single fight, which usually only last for a minute. It’s a far cry from Ubud’s Colonic Hydrotherapy Centre, but as Tyler Durden says in Fight Club: “Self-improvement is masturbation, maybe self-destruction is the answer”. Marla Singer, the book’s femme fetale says of her own voyeuristic cancer group visits: “Funerals are nothing compared to this. Funerals are all abstract ceremony. Here, you have the real experience of death.” There’s no abstraction at Bali’s fight clubs. No leaflet handed out at the door. What you encounter is visceral, violent and unsympathetic to any Western standards of political correctness.
The day I took these photographs, I had a vegan burger in Ubud for breakfast, went for a bike ride along the rice paddies and stumbled across the cockfighting by chance ten minutes out of town. I headed back for a massage and finished the evening with a viewing of the Kecak, which I’d been excited to see since my first viewing of Baraka.
Both the Kecak and the cockfighting events are a stimulating cultural experience. Even if the the Bali that most visitors see itself isn’t wholly authentic, does it really matter? After all, ignorance, especially for the ethical tourist coming to eat, pray and love themselves for a week, is bliss.
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Why do we travel?
Is it to escape our daily routine? Perhaps it’s to see the world and how others live. Some of us travel for an extended holiday while others wish to challenge themselves by living economically along the road less traveled.
On a recent trip to Cambodia, I desired to do all of the above. I left with lighter pockets but felt richer in spirit.
Here are ten things I learned in the Cambodian school of life.
1. BE YOUR OWN GUIDE
However much pre-trip planning you’ve done, you’ll meet plenty of people along the way to help guide you. The best outcomes are usually the result of gut instinct.
Too many of travelers rush from A to B without stopping to smell the lotus flowers. Loosen your schedule and slow down. Things may not go to plan so learn from your mistakes or misfortunes – they will make you stronger and wiser.
In Battambang, my friend Chris and I were going to visit a killing field area when teh steep ticket price, coupled with amount of tourists heading there made us do a 180 degree turn and we found ourselves a few minutes later in a monk’s garden who had a playful pet monkey. No ticket required.
2. SHARE YOUR PASSION – At a guesthouse I met a young man named Jacob. Instead of the typical “What do you do?”, he asked “What’s your passion?”. I told him photography, he was into drawing and painting. When the guesthouse owners discovered our passions, Jacob was commissioned to design his first mural for them, while I was tasked to document the process.
Over the course of five weeks, I saw an incredible amount of creative talent emerge from people both individually and collaboratively. Showing your talent not only displays it to the world, but the sharing of it openly encourages you to up your game.
The merging of different crafts as people create together breeds new forms of expression This can create a ripple effect, inspiring others and even forming communities. Otres Beach on the south coast of Cambodia was one such community of artistically minded foreigners forging an alternative society for themselves outside of the ones made for them by society. “It’s like ‘The Beach’, said an Otres veteran, referring to Alex Garland’s novel.
3. GIVE BACK
Too many human interactions are fleeting and momentary. Whether it’s life or travel, we should always consider whether we are taking more than we’re giving.
My prime reason for going to Cambodia this time was to deliver a magazine to a girl I’d photographed two years prior. Her image featured in a travel article I wrote about Kampot.
Although I’d returned the same photograph as a print the first time around, she wasn’t that impressed (it was the colour isolation, I know it!), but when I returned with the magazine, her jaw hit the floor. Her friends and family were also excited but I think I may have been the happiest because of the sense of completion it gave me and how positive the reaction was. It also provided a portal into a community I wouldn’t have a reason to visit otherwise.
Of course, in Cambodia there many ways you can give your time, such as help to build a school, teach, volunteer for various cleanup projects, the list is endless. Returning a printed photograph is just the tip of the iceberg.
4. JUDGE NOT
Some of you may have seen monks subverting the stereotype of purity and innocence in South East Asia. Whether it’s smoking or playing rap music from smartphones, some tourists are surprised to see behaviour that taints their idealized image of monkhood, while others decry it morally wrong.
Donning an orange robe doesn’t take away what’s underneath. Many of the young monks talk about girls, listen to rap, play fight and generally act their age. Boys will be boys, and the more you get to know them on an individual level, the less idealized your vision becomes.
Some people are kinder than others, some more innocent, others more corrupt. This applies whether you have an orange robe or a suit and tie, no matter how we present ourselves in public or on our social media profiles. We all have vices, so never be quick to judge someone else’s character without first being honest about your own.
FLOW
Achieving a state of flow means clearing your mind of thoughts of past or future and focusing on the here and now. The gentle nature of Cambodians, the staggered beauty of their ravaged tropical landscape and the slower pace of life compared it’s more aggressively modernizing neighbour, Thailand, means that crossing into Cambodia is like entering a new realm of existence.
Spending time in Cambodia, where your everyday conveniences are stripped back and you aren’t so comfortable, shakes up your senses and makes you more alert. The developed world has people wrapped up in emotional cotton wool – we’ve become victims of comfort.
As Brad Pitt’s character Tyler Durden says in the film Fight Club: “The things you own end up owning you”. You won’t realize the truth of this statement until you relinquish, however briefly, the myriad of material accumulations you surrounded yourself with back home. The disregard of so many material possessions allows us to relax, be happier and embrace a more present state of mind. If there are still things that you miss after time away from them, you will value them even more in their absence.
6. MAKE CONNECTIONS
If you’ve traveled to uncover more about a culture, a great way to satiate your curiosity is to directly approach people.
In Cambodia, I’ve seen countless tourists walking sheepishly around temples, Lonely Planet in hand, curiously staring at monks but often too shy to talk to them. The monks I’ve told about this have revealed that they too are shy because of their own relative social isolation, and more often than not, they’re unnecessarily worried about their English ability. Cambodian Monks tend to study foreign languages so there’s a good chance you’ll be able to strike up a conversation. In one temple I visited they even studied Korean.
We are each other’s curiosity, and once you approach someone and start asking questions, you will find they may be equally curious about your own life and culture.
7. IMMERSE YOURSELF
One way to immerse yourself in the culture of a country is to learn about some of it’s history. In a place Cambodia, I would consider it essential, considering how impactful the Khmer Rouge-led genocide was.
The main victimsof the killing were the intelligentsia, thus when the Khmer Rouge was removed from power, Cambodia was not only financially poor, but intellectually – a burden the country is still suffering heavily from to this day. Contextual knowledge of your surroundings will allow yourself to see things with more understanding.
Gaining a new perspective from afar can allow you re-assess your own priorities and emotional attachments. Likewise, returning to a familiar place can give us ‘reverse culture shock’, a feeling that once-familiar surroundings can no longer be seen in the same light as before. Previous paradigms of reality can shift dramatically when relative to aspects of life you’ve witnessed in different cultures.
8. EMBRACE CHANGE
The place you once visited will not be the same place you return to. Everything changes. Nothing in the material world ever stays the same. To quote Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club character again: “Nothing is static. Everything is evolving. Everything is falling apart.”
Five years ago at Otres Beach, on Cambodia’s south coast, there was almost no development. Now it is a large community with long-term foreign residents mixed with short-term backpackers and flashpackers. It’s still retains a secluded charm, yet utopia’s inevitability of dystopia means that the population and prices in Otres will keep rising and the quaint little foreign enclave will transformed to something more soulless. But that’s OK – because there’s always a new version of ‘The Beach’ when the old one gets overrun. (2020 edit: dystopia is now in full effect)
Yet it’s not just the tourist enclaves, change is dramatically evident in Cambodia’s capital city of Phnom Penn, where the sizable ship of capitalism has dropped it’s heavy anchor. The city center’s shanty neighbourhoods have mostly been cleared for the development luxury malls, hotels and a new two million dollar mosque. Phnom Penh provides a fascinating contrast of this divide between rich and poor.
Instead of bemoaning and fighting the inevitable, we must accept that we have to make the most of what is in front of us in the present, because it might not be around in the future.
9. RETURN TO NATURE
Walk barefoot in sand and listen to the music of the ocean. Explore forests. Soak in sunlight and observe a slow sunset, escaping the grey urban matrix we’ve constructed for ourselves.
After taking daily two hour walks along the beach in Otres, I was physically healthier and felt much of the stress formed from my previous city-dwelling lifestyle dissipate over time as I attuned to nature’s natural rhythms. Don’t just take my word for it, this observation is backed up by psychological research.
Spend time in more organic realms, this is where we belong. Relax, detach and still your restless mind. It will do you a world of good.
10. UNDERSTAND LIFE IS DEFINED BY OPPOSITES
In developing nations such as Cambodia you are witness to stark contradictions. The sense of freedom you feel in a country with loose laws can also be the reason for it’s dangers. Foreign communities are appealing alternative societies, but in contrast to the surrounding local culture, they can can be seen as neo-colonialism. You can see this emerging on the beaches of the south coast (2020 update: especially now), but in Siem Reap, where the tourist dollar is king, the amount of foreigners have turned the place into Disneyland.
Despite a lack of decent infrastructure, the relatively simple lifestyle Cambodians have lived by is one of less worry and anxiety than the hyperactive status-driven countries of the West. People always comment how people in developing nations seem happier, despite having ;ess material wealth. The late rapper The Notorious B.I.G. talked about the accumulation of wealth breeding “Jealousy, envy and negative energy”. Philosopher Alain De Botton calls this Status Anxiety.
Traveling and living with less creature comforts for a while can put things in perspective about what are the true things in life that create joy. Negatively comparing yourself to your neighbour or your friends’ highlighted and carefully-presented social media lives will merely lead to feelings of inadequacy. Go hang out in the Cambodian countryside for a while instead.
Of course, there are many more lessons to learn. Visiting a country can provide much more than embracing an unfamiliar culture and environment – it may give you refreshed perspectives about the places and people back home, too.
Written and photographed by Simon Slater
For more Secret Map posts on Cambodia, there are Where the Buffalo Roam, Return to the Land of the Buffalo, and Journey of Life: A Cambodian Odyssey.
What’s your name?
“Nicole.”
Where are you from?
“I’m from Israel but my parents are from the Ukraine.”
What are you doing today?
“No plan.”
Perfect, you can be my model.
Dressed from head to toe in Korean garments, I’d met this culturally fluid 20 year old at breakfast in the modern center of an equally culturally divergent city – Hong Kong. Traveling alone, she’d an optimistic energy to her which seemed to encapsulate the spirit of the city.
If one Hongkonger ever mirrored the city’s synthesis of traditional and forward thinking ambitions it’s Bruce Lee. His philosophy of fluidity and adaptability is observed in the urban landscape here where ancient temples are seamlessly interwoven into modern neighborhoods. His unrivaled success in fusing eastern and western cultures can be seen in the city’s sophisticated melting pot of international inhabitants and lifestyles.
The main umbrellas on parade were wielded by those sheltering from sudden rain storms, yet in recent times umbrellas signified protection of a different measure. The 2014 Umbrella Movement of citizens protesting to retain their democracy culminated in violent clashes between citizens and their police force. Like Bruce lee himself, who fought an opponent arranged by the martial arts establishment to keep teaching westerners, the people here showed fierce grit and determination to live independently and not be controlled by outside forces.
To say people here are tight knit would be an understatement. In a city with over 40 billionaires, real estate is sky high and living space is extremely close quarters.
Hong Kong’s elderly are amongst the developed world’s poorest citizens, second only to South Korea. Like Seoul, the pace of life and modern developments seem to favor the youth, so adaptation is key to survival in this urban jungle.
Unique hybrids develop out of fusion along with new ways of seeing.
The wilting bodies of the elderly compared to the vibrant youth, like the constructions of Kowloon to it’s glitzy Hong Kong Island counterpart stand in direct contrast to each other yet are more complete when considered as a whole. There is beauty in transience, and Hong Kong, much like the legacy of Bruce Lee, stands as an embodiment of adaptation and forward thinking.
“One of our major flaws, and causes of unhappiness, is that we find it hard to take note of what is always around us. We suffer because we lose sight of the value of what is before us and yearn, often unfairly, for the imagined attraction elsewhere.”
– Alan De Botton
It was during a stay in center of Bangkok that my travel instincts began to take hold.
I was eyeing up one final location between the week-long waiting period between dentist visits. After all, I’d used the city as a launch pad to the region so many times over the years it was nothing new to me.
Yet at the tail end of a backpacking stint, combined with the suffocating sauna heat outside, I opted to stay put. I had photos to edit. Plus, I had a camera and the streets of Bangkok are worth documenting.
Leave
“I don’t want the public to see the world they live in while they’re in the park. I want them to feel they’re in another world.”
– Walt Disney
My base was Sukhumvit, in central Bangkok. A short walk along the main road here is hectic, kinetic, pulsating, sinful, diverse and stimulating. Stained, well-trodden, pungent pavements underlie the crystal castles of five star hotels and the towering pleasure domes of chic shopping centers, cathedrals to commercialization.
It’s a classic contemporary contrast to observe while every stereotype of humanity seems to pass by or try sell you everything under the sun from flick knives and tasers to viagra and fake brand watches.
More exciting than a beach break, more authentic than the floating markets and cheaper than the Grand Palace, walking the streets with a camera and an inquisitive eye can make a week pass by in a minute.
My philosophy on urban travel photography is this: If you were to send a postcard to friends back home sans words, what would the true image be? What’s really occurring? What’s truly worth reporting?
Lose yourself amongst the chaos. Wander instinctively. Sense the mood of those around you. Ease your own. Relax into a meditative state. Attune. Plug in to the culture.
Make an intimate portrait of a complete stranger.
Too shy to approach your subject? Hide your camera.
Break the ice. Make eye contact. Ask questions.
“What’s that on your face? May I take a photo?”
Baby powder apparently has a cooling effect on the skin, This explains T-Bone.
Take your opportunities. ‘Pu’ was my little buddha in the oasis of calm that is WH Hostel in Bangkok.
I wanted his portrait against the DMT skull for a few days. When I saw him passing it by, I asked his Grandmother’s permission. This is his garden wall, but the next day the artwork became obscured by a shipping container – the hostel’s new office. The whole hostel is made completely from these vessels and, like the rest of the city, is in a constant state of flux and rapid progress.
If I’d left it one more day, the opportunity would have been lost.
The mega malls of Siam are representative of Neo Bangkok. This is Metropolis. Elysium. Babel. A Brave New World ushering in hungry consumers to their voluntary prisons.
I too am not immune to the grandiose power these modern churches hold – I’d chosen Siam Paragon for my dental procedure.
Nightcrawler
“It was unearthly, and the men were—No, they were not inhuman. Well, you know, that was the worst of it—the suspicion of their not being inhuman. It would come slowly to one. They howled and leaped, and spun, and made horrid faces; but what thrilled you was just the thought of their humanity—like yours—the thought of your remote kinship with this wild and passionate uproar. Ugly. Yes, it was ugly enough; but if you were man enough you would admit to yourself that there was in you just the faintest trace of a response to the terrible frankness of that noise, a dim suspicion of there being a meaning in it which you—you so remote from the night of first ages—could comprehend. And why not?”
– Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness
Neon beacons emerge from the descending darkness of nightfall, immersing city-dwellers in a Bladerunner-esque cityscape.
Flickering streetlights invite you to unravel their mystery.
Humanity’s endeavors appear more prominent amidst mechanical backdrops.
Disintegrate.
The photographer should transform and adapt to the changes around them.
Absorb the atmosphere.
Transcend.
Enter the Void.
Become a ghost in the night.
Welcome to the red light district.
Observe the night shift, the funeral march.
Nana Plaza, a three-tier stadium of desires,is where streams of individual masses perform an age-old pas-des-deux in a new age setting.
Voulez-vous coucher avec mois, ce soir?
There’s no need for a silky tongue in this place. Like the nearby malls, money gets customers what they desire.
Who seeks? Who follows? Who’s cat and who’s mouse?
Control and command. Subordinate and superior. Servant and master.
The lines can be blurred.
Most streets are two-way.
Supply. Demand. Repeat.
Observe a culture’s accentuated variations, it’s isolated evolutions,
What makes one place different to another?
The changing face of Bangkok isn’t just restricted to the architecture.
In Nana, exchanges occur long after the foreign currency bureaus close their windows.
Speed dating, Bangkok style.
Frame. Create a narrative. Hold up a mirror to what you see.
Return to Real
“We are caged by our cultural programming. Culture is a mass hallucination, and when you step outside the mass hallucination, you see it for what it’s worth.”
Terrence McKenna
You see them all the time. Narrow alleys aligned with aged wooden houses or the shanty-strewn train tracks cutting through the cluster of Seven-Elevens, McDonalds and massage parlours.
How often do you decide to follow your curiosity and venture off the conveyor belt of consumer tourism and venture into parts unknown?
It’s not a philosophy for everyone, granted.
It forces you to remove the cloak of tourist anonymity and stirs an acute awareness in us that we are the foreigner.
It creates alertness, heightens our senses.
You’re not supposed to be here, which is precisely why you should be, in fact, be here.
.
Follow your instincts. Take the road less travelled.
If it scares you then it’s probably because you’re on the right path
Welcome to the organic realm. The desert of the real.
Change occurs much more slowly here, there’s a natural rhythm.
Though with the matrix never completely out of sight, you may experience some Deja vu.
The characters that inhabit this more harmonious underbelly are more genuine. Less-versed in English but more honest.
Unlike the street hawkers or ubiquitous billboards outside, nobody will try to sell you things you don’t need here.
Seek out these more traditional communities.
Be brave and you shall be rewarded with true authentic experience.
Examine. Probe. Dare yourself further onwards, inwards, down the rabbit hole.
Capture what you see, but don’t overstep your boundaries.
Don’t outstay your welcome or take an unwelcome photograph.
Know when to move on.
Take detours.
You never know what surprises await around each new corner.
It was meeting Indonesian-born ‘Sa’, a 79 year old former English translator to diplomats, in a neighborhood comprised of traditional Thai wooden houses that I arrived at Bangkok’s core.
Having spent most of her life in the village, which is hidden away yet still among the shining sky towers, she was pure of heart and as resilient as the teak wood of her residence.
She was the unassuming epicenter of Bangkok.
Next time you feel unsatisfied, when you start to feel that splinter in your mind, take a step back.
Turn off autopilot.
Put away the guidebook.
Draw your own map.
Challenge yourself.
True adventure starts here.
The photographs in this article were taken over the course of a week in Sukhumvit, Bangkok.
This was a follow up of sorts to this previous article.
For the latest images from The Secret Map, take a look at the Facebook page.
Since I last visited the beautiful rural paradise of Kampot, Cambodia, one of my biggest desires was to return. I loved the nature and the feeling of freedom as I rode among the rice paddies and buffalo, and of course the warm greetings of people everywhere I went. Cambodians are renowned for their hospitable and friendly nature, and the continual wide smiles and shouts of “Hello wassyourname?” always warms my heart and fills me with positive energy.
The thing I was most excited to do, however, was revisit a village close to Ganesha, the guesthouse I stayed at, to give a small gift to one of the young residents there. I wanted to find ‘Buffalo Girl’, who I took a photograph on my last visit.
As I parked my motorbike near the local mosque I was immediately surrounded by inquisitive village kids. This village in the countryside is far off the radar for most visitors so I was quite a novelty them.
I showed the picture of Buffalo Girl that I took two years ago to the kids and gradually built up an entourage taking me through gardens and washing areas until we arrived at her house. Sat scrubbing her clothes, she didn’t recognize me until I opened the copy of Busan Haps Magazine with her in it. Her jaw dropped to the floor and her eyes bulged. Success.
She was now a local celebrity, and it was so good to see her smile, since when I had returned with a print of the photo the time before didn’t seem to care. It must have been a surreal moment for Doray, as I learned was her name, a village girl living a simple life, suddenly a celebrity.
One of the biggest fans of the article was an elderly lady named Mai, who, with her crooked back but warm smile and kind eyes, hobbled along the courtyard and pushed her way past the kids to see it.
An American girl named Sarah who I’d brought along took a picture of us all in a state of total contentment. For that moment, all was right with the world. Worries past, present and future were swept firmly under the carpet. Sarah, on her first trip to Asia, was definitely in the midst of The Secret Map experience.
Doray and her friends and family let us hang out and take more shots, which became the primary means of communication. It’s moments like these that have made photography such an integral part of my, and many others’ travel experience.
I put forth the proposition of another buffalo portrait to the group. Five minutes later, ‘Buffalo Boy’ rounded the corner.
I returned a couple more times with the portraits, this time with ace photographer Scott Rotzoll. I met Scott in Korea where we’d both lived for a number of years, and whom was about to begin a stint of living in the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penn. Scott also made, printed and returned portraits.
Aside from the village, we took many portraits around Kampot in other Muslim villages and the salt fields where workers carry heavy loads of evaporated piles of sea crystals to nearby storage sheds.
I bumped into an acquaintance in the very same spot that i’d seen him two years prior, so came back with his portrait from the first time we’d met. We shared a coffee and communicated in mine and a friend’s broken French.
Until next time, Kampot.
The Secret Map 
