color processing + scanning = $3.3 per roll; not bad at all

trip to HUA HIN etc

Bangkok is an amazing city - but very noisy, hectic, polluted - hellish traffic, just crossing the street can be life threatening . So we decided to take a trip to HUA HIN, city on the beach, 2 hours drive from Bangkok. It's getting really hot here, I needed a hat, and here is what I got - A RONALDINHO HAT! perfect. (hey, so let's write something on this hat, it'll look better; hm, what do we write? RONALDINHO! of course, what else!)

Being on the beach felt amazing. The only way for me to relax and take a break is to be somewhere where there is NOTHING to shoot. And from time to time it felt exactly like that. I recharged my batteries.

We had a weird encounter with monkeys, one of them sneaked into our van, stole a pack of tissues and ran off. I went after him but he started hissing at me, showing his teeth so I gave up. fuck tissues, who cares. vicious monkeys. but very cute.




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We also visited some Buddhist temples, that felt good, you definitely feel good energy in places of mass worship...

father of 2

BIG APPLE club, Bangkok

It's not easy to get access to shoot in these upscale gentlemen's clubs ... fortunately a friend of a friend introduced me to the owner, and he gave me total access. The way it works is - guys come to the club, then a 'madam' lines up some girls, they choose which ones they wanna hang out with. The girls are just merchandise. Officially it's not prostitution, but at the end of the night anything goes.

rooftop view from our condo building in bangkok

ghost towns of china

AMAZING

FRANK 151 long sleeve tee - go get it ...

FRANK 151 BLOG POST

BUY IT HERE

hanging out with the body collectors

I spent a night on call with the so called "body snatchers" ... these guys listen to police/rescue radios, and when there is a car crash they drive to the scene to collect the body and take it to the morgue, or to help whoever is injured. Most of them are volunteers, and do it for the merit, it's a Buddhist thing. The night was quiet, there was only one minor accident, no one seriously injured.
It's kind of weird, I'm waiting with the guys, and I'm bored, but at the same time, as much as it would be interesting to be called to an accident, it would mean someone would have to get hurt or die so I would take good pictures. There is a big conflict there. The photographer and the human being are constantly fighting in me, and thank God the human being is winning.

Yep, I love my job, it's the best job in the world, but it can get confusing from time to time.




good LINK about the body collectors.

girls from THE CLASSIC karaoke bar

THE CLASSIC karaoke bar

My favorite spot in Bangkok is now THE CLASSIC karaoke bar, you can see why...

by the canal

by the railroad, bangkok

At 6am I met with my friend Landry in the Siam area and he took me for a walk by the railroad tracks ... the people who live around there are mostly poor workers who worked on the skytrain metro system. Really poor people, but very very welcoming. Strikes me as very strange, where I come from, and pretty much wherever I've been too, poor people tend to be bitter, and they have a good reason for it.






We stumbled upon a guy who trains cocks for fighting. Really beautiful birds ...

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We were just walking around and ended up in a weird slummy neighborhood near some canals. Some prostitutes, people selling random shit on the street, everything really dirty ... for me, the surprising thing is that even in really shitty looking neighborhoods (those neighborhoods that when you enter, you think for a second SOMEONE MIGHT KILL ME HERE) people turn out to be ok, and a lot of them smile.



Prostitutes in general wouldn't let me take pictures of them, but this was didn't mind at all

bolo and van damme

abandoned 50 story building in Bangkok

patpong etc