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queenmuzz · 5 years ago

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Deep Blue Sea: Chapter V

Prisoner’s Dilemma

Full story is on Ao3 here.

“...and we're expected to reach 4 percent growth this quarter,” the chief officer of finance droned on, “with a goal of ten percent growth at the end of the year. The Asian markets are causing immense growth, and our acquisition of Mallet Fisheries has opened us to the European markets, particularly among with herring and cod”

Your head nodded, and you were failing the to fight the urge to doze off, when you felt your knee being squeezed. You jerked, and looked to your right, to a apologetically smiling Fredrick. Hastily, you checked around at the other men and women at the mahogany table, to see if anyone else had noticed. Thankfully, they seemed all engrossed at the woman at the podium.

“Unfortunately, we may not reach our projected growth this year, due to unforeseen circumstances regarding mechanical issues with our ships, and especially the sinking of the Phantom.” You felt heat creep up your neck and face, you knew exactly what they were talking about. (The Phantom was one of the larger ships the company owned, to think Vergil could have single-handedly taken it down...wow, you were impressed).

“But nevertheless,” she continued, “We've been personally assured that the cause of these malfunctions have been taken care of, and we should not face anymore issues.” You grimaced, and then quickly checked if anyone else had seen your reaction, but even Fredrick hadn't seen anything, thank God.

“And with that,” she said, “I leave the last words to our wonderful owner.” A round of polite clapping followed as your father walked up up to podium, a big grin on his face. He adjusted his reading glasses, as he checked his notes. “As you know, my Father started this business as a small humble fleet of boats, set on the east coast, and was very happy at how it grew and prospered. When he passed it down to me, he told me, 'Son, this is your family legacy. Take care of it as if it was your own child. Nurture it, support it, watch it grow and succeed. And one day, you will see it grow up more than you could have ever hoped.'” He smiled and looked up. “When my father handed me the company, it was large, a dominant fishing fleet that covered the east coast. And several decades later, we've managed to make our family business fully live up to it's name. Mundus is the Latin word for 'The World', and I am proud to see the the company I've worked hard to build has truly lived to it's name. Mundus Ltd has truly become a worldwide company.”

He looked straight at you “Which is why I'm happy to announce that as of today, I'll be letting my daughter, and future son-in-law slowly take over the business.” Surprised murmurings came from the suits, which your father quickly quieted down. “Now don't worry, this transitional period will be at least five years, and possibly a whole decade, to make it as smooth as possible, and I'll be in charge up until the very end. No one's job is at risk. All I ask is that you would treat them as hospitably as you can, help them learn the ropes of this business, and by the time my daughter is ready to take the reins, you'll barely notice the difference. Does anyone have any questions, for me or for our future leaders?”

Thankfully, the boardroom was full of people who were thinking exactly like you, and wanting to get out, asap, so no hands were raised. “Well, that about wraps this meeting up, thank you all for attending, we'll meet up in a few weeks time.” Your father said, as the board members attempted to not look to eager to leave the room. You attempted to do the same, but unfortunately, your dad intercepted you, “I know it's a lot of pressure, to live up to this responsibility, but I'm sure with just a few years of training, you'll be ready to take over your legacy. After all, it's in the blood, right?” He laughed as he placed his hand on your shoulder, “Let's go out for a business lunch, I can show you the basics”

You wanted to decline, but Fredrick saved the day. “Sorry sir, but we've already planned our lunch together,” which you father seemingly was fine with.

“Have fun, you lovebirds!” he called out as you left the building, causing you to blush immensely.

*****

You sat in the booth, poking at your salad. You'd at first been happy that Fredrick had 'rescued' you from the attentions of your father, but now you were regretting it, since your fiance was a bit nervous, a bit distant. He kept glancing at his phone, like he was expecting a call, and it was getting a bit annoying.

“So, you expecting someone?” you attempted to ask nonchalantly, after his sixth checkup.

He sighed apologetically, “I'm sorry, my dad is expecting me home soon, he has business dealings with a Japanese engineering firm he wants me to be a part of, but we're not sure when they will show up, their flight might be a bit early. He paused, took a drink of his water, and stiffened, “which is what I wanted to talk to you about.”

“What does this have to do with me?” you asked, somewhat nervously.

He sighed, as if he really didn't want this conversation. “It looks like my father wants me to head with the engineering team back to Japan to oversee the construction and operation of the new fish processing plant.”

You were relieved. It wasn't something bad at all, he was just nervous about the 'promotion' “Oh that's great! It's wonderful that you're father trusts you with such an important task. I'm sure you'll do great at it.”

He grimaced, “Yeah... that's the problem. I'll be out of the country for nearly ten and half months...”

You mentally calculated... you'd been engaged for a month, and in that time you'd seen Fredrick a grand total of... four days. That would leave...

“You'll only have a half a month to get ready before the wedding?!”

“Yeah, I know, I brought this up with my dad, but he said that this couldn't wait.... this was the perfect opportunity to get my feet wet in the business, and that I'd be a fool to miss this,” he said sheepishly.

“But the planning... I thought we were going to do this together!”

“We can, I won't be in the middle of nowhere, I'll have 24/7 internet access.”

“That won't help me with contacting vendors, caterers, and convention areas... it won't help me choose flowers or who to invite and who's persona non grata to the ceremony,” you protested.

Your fiance gritted his teeth as his head “Look, my father said that was usually the reserve of the ladies, and you're getting a top notch wedding planner, so how hard could it be? By the time I come back, the only thing we'll need is the tuxedo fitting, and we'll be good to go.”

“How hard could it be!?” you wanted to scream, but you couldn't start a scene in public. Besides, he had a point, how many months had he gone without seeing you while you were busy on you studies? He deserved this chance to make something of himself, even if it put more of a burden on you. It wouldn't be fair to him to deny him this, not when you were comfortable at home, no expectations... just arrange a wedding, and learn how your father's business ran. Still, you had hoped that both of you would be able to do this as a team....

“Alright, I guess. I mean, I won't deny that I'm disappointed...but do you really want this?”

He placed his hand on yours, and smiled apologetically. “Yes, although I wish it was at any other time of my life. It's a shame how life likes to throw curve balls at us. Now,” he said as he waved a passing waiter for the check, “Let me drive you home, and I'll get you my future contact info.”

*****

Fredrick pulled into your driveway, and hurriedly got out to open the door for you. He was always so gentlemanly about it, and even when it occasionally annoyed you, you couldn't bear to tell him to stop.

“We've arrived, milady” he joked as he escorted you to your front door. As you went through your keys to get the correct one, you paused. Your fiance had not been to your place since the aquarium was set up, and hadn't been told about Vergil. In fact, aside from your father and 'Doctor' Griffon, you were pretty sure no one knew about the merman.

What was strange was that you weren't worried about what Fredrick would think of Vergil, it was more of what Vergil would Fredrick. Would he see him as an intruder? What nonsense! In the past month, with your daily conversations, you'd told him many things about yourself, your family (although you had wisley steered away from talking about your father) friends, and... your fiance. What had Vergil called him? Ah, yes, 'Future Bondmate'. Merfolk seemed to have the romantic terms for everything. Surely he would be understanding enough that he would see Fredrick was no threat.

“Having trouble, honey?” Fredrick's voice intruded into your thoughts.

“I'm sorry, between all the keys from the estate, it's always hard to find the right one.” You fingered each key on the ring. One for your father's place, one for the warehouse on the estate, one to you mother's... and of course, one to Fredrick's place. Not to mention the ones to the private dock where you and your father kept your boats.

“Ah, here it is” you pulled it out in victory, and you inserted the key, and turned. “Now I must warn you, my place is a bit different since you last came over...” but by then it was too late, your fiance had inadvertently pushed you aside to get a better look at the aquarium. Could you really blame him? He didn't quite share the same fascination of the oceans as you, but only a curmudgeon would fail to appreciate the beauty of such an extravagant aquarium. He marveled at the coral, the rocks, the fish...

But not Vergil.

The merman was nowhere to be seen. You panicked for a brief moment, worried that Vergil had attempted an escape, and was currently stuck or hurt. But then you saw just a flicker of movement, from behind one of the farther rocks, nearly imperceptible to anyone who didn't know there was something there in the first place. Vergil, cautious as ever (and could you blame him?) had obviously heard a stranger, and decided retreat was the wisest course of action. “Amazing, your father really has outdone himself this time.” He observed a school of angelfish swim past. “It will be a bit of a hassle to move it to my place after the wedding...”

“Wait” you interrupted, jokingly “Who's to say I'm moving in with you?”

“I need to be close to my business, and close to the airport should I need to make an emergency trip to one of the factories.” he said, straight faced.

You realized he wasn't joking, and you protested “But this is my place, my home... we haven't even discussed our living arrangements yet.”

He seemed to have grasped quickly what you were talking about. “Sorry, I really shouldn't have assumed....Look, we don't have to move in all the way, you can keep this place as your home, live at my place part time, it's not really going to be that far, just a half hour drive if the traffic is good. We can even-” he was interrupted by a incessant buzzing, and he grabbed his phone, looking at message. “Aw damn, looks like their flight has arrived.” He began walking to the door, with you following. “Look, I'll try to call you every night, you work out all the arrangements, and I'll say yes to everything and anything you want. I want this to be the day you always dreamed about.” He gave you a quick kiss on the lips, before opening the front door, and running to his car. He pulled out at an alarming rate of speed, waving to you the entire time. You reciprocated, smiling and waving all the while until he was out of sight. Only then did your arm slowly fall down, and your smile fade.

Slowly closing the door, you trudged inside, before flopping down on the couch. It was only early afternoon, and yet you were exhausted. You were could only deal with so much personal interaction for so long without starting to break down. And now you were expected to take care of every single detail of this wedding. And it was going to be big wedding, you knew that. It would have been nice if the workload had been sha-

“So that is your bondmate to be?” Vergil's inner voice gently prodded you from your anxiety inducing thoughts. You looked back at the aquarium glass, where he floated silently. Only now did you notice that his once pale tale was now speckled with blue scales, and his fins now had more of a blueish tint to them, unrelated to the lights of the aquarium.

“Yeah, that's Fredrick,” you waited for his judgement, no doubt negative, as Vergil had a very low opinion of humans in general.

“He seems like a good man” he responded, and you smiled. Perhaps he wasn't the curmudgeon you thought he was.

“But you do not love him.”

You did a double take, “Wait, what do you mean?”

He kept his eyes on you, but not in a judgmental way, “The way you talk to him, the physical gestures, the way you smile...” you thought about how he was watching you smile, and you felt bubbly inside, before shoving it back down. “You do not hate him, nor dislike him, but as a bondmate....” he hesitated before continuing on “he is not what you wish for the rest of your life. Which perplexes me, why do you go through with this?”

You thought about the first part. Vergil was correct, while you and Fredrick were good friends, almost best friends, you couldn't really take it to the next level. But the wedding... once you were married, things would work out.

“It's more complicated than that, Vergil. Humans don't always marry for love, it's actually a relatively new concept, especially among upper classes. We usually married to bind families together, whether property, land, or power. Hopefully, love was added benefit.”

“Strange” the merman mused, “Perhaps it is due to humans and their need for possessions has superseded other concerns. We merfolk do not have such concerns, and as such, we value our connections, with out family, friends, our... bondmates. To create such a connection” he said seriously, and you realized this was the first you'd heard about mer culture, “is a life long commitment, one that has power that is.... inexplicable” You hesitated, worried at that you would bring up bad memories, “Vergil...do you...have a bondmate?”

He was taken aback, and he backed up for a tense moment, “No.... I was a bit of an oddity, I preferred to go my way for the past few years. Perhaps in a few years... if ...” his eyes seemed to dim, and he looked like he was staring at nothing.

“Vergil,” you said softly, and the alertness returned, but not to the same exact level as before, “The offer is still on the table, if you want to leave, I'll get you to the ocean.” You had expected him to either happily take the offer, or return to his angry state and denial. You didn't expect a small, sad smile.

“The offer is appreciated whether you place it on a table or in the aquarium, but I must decline...for now.”

“Well, if you ever change your mind, at any time, I'll do it. I don't want you to be a prisoner here.”

“We seem to have that in common...” he chuckled without mirth, causing you to cock your head in confusion. “You do not wish to see me a prisoner of this cage and I...” he paused, “I do not wish to see you a prisoner of expectations....”

And with that, he (rapidly) swam away, leaving you flummoxed, confused, and suddenly rather disconcerted.

#Devil May Cry #Deep Blue Sea #Vergil #Vergil x Reader #Mergil #Vergill

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rwby-rants-and-theories · 8 years ago

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You know with all the inconstancy RWBY has by v4 about aura, semblances, dust, kingdoms(because suddenly Mistral that even in art from previous season looked different and was coded different) and humanity origin stories, it just seems like 'listen people, we give you an open world book with different paths. take whichever you want and have fun with it, toodaloo'. Like1/2

really as a writer my reaction was ‘so um…I can just take whatever I want and create my own sub world in it because it seems to be just as canon as whatever they create?’ because really it just seems they write the story and make up things as they go and just add EUREKA(s) that they came up with, completely disregarding whenever it contradicts established things or not.

You know, this whole spiel reminds me of that one thing David Benioff and D.B. Weiss said about making Dany and Tyrion meet in GoT Season 5.

What was it again? “Creatively it made sense to us, because we wanted it to happen”?

LOL, mediocre writer logic at its finest. Just make things happen not because they make sense, but simply because you want them to happen.

And before anyone says “What about fan fiction, Daniel? Are you attacking fan fiction writers? They write about things that aren’t canon so are you saying fan fiction writers are dumb and selfish?”

Let me fucking tell you that good writing and bad writing still exist in fan fiction. Crap decisions and missteps about a narrative path can very much happen if you don’t have intelligent, coherent, consistent, and appropriate reasons for something to happen.

“I want Ruby and Weiss on a fluffy coffee shop AU” is a much more different creative direction than “I want Ruby and Weiss to meet and fall in love in Vacuo but only after Raven has captured Ruby in a Mistrali circus, killed Adam Taurus in Kuroyuri, and then taken her to Menagerie which is now a principality of Atlas to find a Relic that somehow reveals Qrow is actually Ruby’s dad, Salem is Summer, and Cinder is her sister.”

See how the latter makes absolutely no fucking sense? See how there is no reason for any of that to happen just for Weiss and Ruby to fall in love? The former makes sense because it’s a common and widely-accepted romance set-up that’s isn’t complicated to manufacture. It’s predictable and easy to follow. It cannot possibly go wrong unless you add unnecessary drama and add things that are nonsensical every other chapter and never find ways to build Ruby and Weiss’s relationship in your story. Barely any world-building is necessary, if at all, because coffee shop AU’s are minuscule in scale.

Even “pick your own adventure” interactive stories (Goosebumps, Fate/stay night, Mass Effect, etc.) have established narratives and rules and specific conditions that’ll lead the reader/player to the different routes they can take. Things just don’t pile up. There are specific, logical reasons why a major event takes place or why characters behave like they do.

You know, what bothers me a bit about RWBY, ok more than a bit is this. They coded Mistral as Mediterranean(ish) kind of place. First the name of a wind that blows through france and Mediterranean.

Then we have the name of the landmass it’s on-Anima which is Latin for soul and again Latin….Roman empire Mediterraneanthe first grade combat school is called Sanctum which again is in Latin and means ‘that which is holy’ or scared.

heck even the names of the most important places together. Anima, Sanctum, Heaven give a bit of connotation to Christianityand some characters we knew from vol.1-2 hailing from there have Roman/Greek names and allude to mythology of those countries.

Pyrrha is Achilles and Neptune is god of the sea. and even the visuals. In Qrow’s story the village and the inn do not have Asian look, the houses do not look the way they do in Kuroyuri for example and neither does the interior.

now maybe his story was fake but like why would he make up in his own mind how the village looked like if it looked differently? surely even if he tells the visual to girls the kingdoms have like TV and CCT and exchange students I think people would how architecture there looks like it looks confusing and a bit…well hypocritical.

They are against racism but are fine with working with such people. and even after we find out they had been blackmailed and maybe, maybe it would go some sensible way?

they take part in taking down Beacon, not caring for fellow faunus and the guy who leads them who for audience is the face of this organisation turns out to be a creepy, obsessive homicidal maniac who is bend on destroying life of his ex for leaving him and is totally ok with everything that is going on and has been going on, which is in contrast with what has been shown in flashback about blackmail

and now in season four we meet further WF members who are unafraid of attacking and killing other faunus simply for not being part of their group or having different approach to things. and there is this line with Salem assuring that Sienna-the current leader- will be as loyal as Adam. so bascially where this ONLY EQUAL RIGTHS ORGANISATION FOR OPRESSED RACE is goingwould maybe change their racist views, which has…worked so well in the past that it changed very little for the 80 years or so it has been practised.

and like it rubs me the wrong way, because it seems like with Mistral chaining over season it’s like writers are patting themselves on the back 'we made Asian kingdom! our show is sooo progressive, racism is over’ idk

Before I get into the rest of this, there’s one misunderstanding we gotta clear out.

It’s not “Heaven Academy”, it’s “Haven Academy”. The names of the Academies are not linked to Christianity, they’re linked to a motif of protection, hope, and safe places. The continents do not receive this treatment and therefore are part of a different naming category.

Now, as for Mistral’s depiction in Volume 3 compared to Volume 4…

…yeah. It seems as if Mistral in Qrow’s flashback is European-coded. Mistral in “No Safe Haven” and the rest of Volume 4 is most definitely Asian-coded.

This is a bit of a longshot and most likely wrong but it cooooouuuuuld be that Mistral is a bit of a melting pot and has different districts made up from members of different cultures (like American and Canadian cities have Chinatowns). Qrow might have happened to wander into a European-coded (Vale, maybe?) settlement of Mistral rather than gone deeper. But by the looks of Mistral in the bottom picture, that might be a null point.

We’re never gonna stop talking about how trash the whole White Fang plotline is, are we?

I don’t like where this arc is going. I like the idea of Blake taking over the White Fang because it 100% makes sense and I totally fucking called it and is the only sensitive direction her plot can go but I HATE how the rest is being handled with a passion.

It’s just bad how the CRWBY is tackling issues of social justice and representation. It makes me sick because it’s one of the most tone-deaf adaptations of real-world oppression dynamics I’ve ever seen. The discourse behind it is endless and riddled with prejudiced trash. I’d link to specific examples but it’s not like they’re hard to find (and also because coming close to those discussions makes me fume with anger).

Rooster Teeth might think they’re progressive. Their writing says otherwise. You’re not progressive simply because you think racism is wrong or that sexual and gender diversity is awesome. You’re progressive when you actively engage in learning about diversity and unlearning discriminatory culture and applying that knowledge to the things you make.

#rwde #jaynefray #daniel answers #thanks for the ask!#long post

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chromacomaphoto · 6 years ago

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The Ultimate Photographer's guide to Bangkok, Thailand: Film and Digital (2016-18)

HEAVILY UPDATED FOR 2017 AND STILL GOING STRONG FOR 2018: NEW UPDATES AND INFORMATION ARE ADDED TO THE VERY BOTTOM OF THIS ARTICLE

Following a surprisingly large influx of requests from readers of this blog for specific tips and advice about coming to Bangkok and greater Thailand for taking pictures, I looked around for such an article. I couldn’t find a great deal of information on the net that was comprehensive, up to date, relevant to film and digital photographers and written accurately by people with enough appropriate experience to satisfy my requirements. This (lack of) discovery was equally surprising and leads to my decision to tackle the issue here myself, hopefully I have not bitten off more sticky rice and mango than I can chew. I shall avoid the off-topic aspects (well covered all over the web) such as accommodation, eating spicy food and where to exchange your traveller’s cheques. That said, there might be some key points where photographic and general interests overlap and these may warrant some brief mention, I’ll try and keep it on track.

General:

The light in Thailand is, in a word, strong. It sounds obvious but it really needs to be accounted for, you can easily get sunburnt on an overcast day walking around in Thailand, distracted by its offerings. For film users, this means that lower speed films of 100 or 200 ISO are more than adequate, 400 would be the limit that I would shoot with in the daytime and that would mandate stopping down significantly and ND filters come in handy for those preferring to be wider open for subject isolation purposes. All digital brethren need not worry about such issues of course. The quality of the light itself is absolutely amazing, especially during those golden hour times just after sunrise and immediately running up to sunset. At such times on a good day, the tropical South East Asian light has an ethereal quality and colour palette which is something often previously unknown to those coming from cooler climes, especially Europeans and the average septentrional North American. During the months in which monsoons and heavy rains pervade, namely June through to December in a typical year, it has been my observation that these golden hours have the potential to be at their most impressive. This is when the lighting in which one can find oneself is akin to dreamlike flashback scenes in films or long lost memories of experiencing mind-altering substances in your youth, to those of such proclivity. In general, the intensity of the light in the daytime is such that when shooting out in the open, I highly advocate the use of lens hoods and a filter of your choice. That said, even in such strong, unflattering overhead light at midday, the labyrinthine layout of this sprawling asphalt jungle still offers up significant shaded area and much opportunity for shadow play. Surprisingly, Bangkok can be as much a black and white shooter’s paradise as a prized locale for the colour adherent. A film shooter coming here for a holiday would do well to have at least some of both.

Places to shoot and related issues:

If you’re here on holiday from another part of the world, I honestly think that almost anywhere in Thailand is nice to shoot. However in the interests of being as helpful and specific as possible, I will try and narrow it down to a selection of suggested ideas. Bangkok is an odd city in that it has no centre per se. If you like urban photography or candid street style shooting, in Bangkok you could try the following: Siam Square (where the kids go to look cool and be seen on the weekends), Chinatown and the sometimes seedy lower Sukhumvit areas. The former is great for a certain kind of classical Asian street work, immigrant ethnic Chinese motifs, old shop fronts and buildings that haven’t changed much in decades. Smoke and steam pour out from small food vendor’s stalls in tight alleyways with great colours abound. The latter offers snapshot opportunities of a broad mix of tourists and seedy types as well as some big city themed shooting. After dark in this area gives you a host of Thai, Arabic and Western fusion with random smiley young prostitutes and ladyboy street hustlers abound. Fast film night work on street level here can be fantastic. Busier office worker parts of town also make for fertile hunting ground on weekdays around peak times and lunch hours when the other areas might be quieter, try Sathorn, Silom or Ploenchit for smartly dressed folk hustling and bustling. These are places where wide-angle lenses of a 24-35mm work well in my opinion. You might well find yourself in tightly squeezed and cramp spaces yet with lots of subjects and quirky elements that you feel you don’t wish to omit from the picture. Leaving a day or a half day for the main Chao Praya river express boat can be a great idea for a shoot and better than getting ripped off for a private wooden longtailed boat ride. Although to be fair, they are also great fun as you can ask the boat owner to go and stop wherever you like within reason, making for some wonderful ‘small river and its local community’ social documentary photo opportunities rather than the standard Lonely Planet cliché shots. Get the regular, larger and reasonably priced tourist boats every 30 minutes for just 150 baht atSathorn Pier, it even connects directly with the skytrain at Saphan Taksin station.

In addition to planning to shoot at various places around the city, don’t underestimate the Helmut Newton approach to choosing location on foreign shoots. His style was borne out of sheer laziness and he shot much of his best work within the hotel grounds or within one kilometer from it. I am not suggesting this be your approach but in Thai streets, you are likely to find your best shot anywhere, even very close to where you are so be ready with the camera set up for action as soon as you head out. You could easily see a small elephant, a street beggar shouting at two-post coital stray dogs with their genitals locked together and a family of four all on one motorbike transporting a desk fan and ironing board the wrong way down a one way street without a helmet between them anywhere at any time. And yes, they will be the ones giving YOU an odd look. For this reason, if your camera allows manual focusing I highly recommend zone focusing your lenses in advance and stopping down at a reasonable ISO so that you can quickly estimate your subject distance on the fly, compose and take shots very quickly. This goes for digital and film shooters. Practice a bit before your trip to get the hang of the depth of field. If you are an auto focus kind of person, you can take your chances. Don’t buy a new camera for your Bangkok adventure, it’s a bad idea photographically speaking anyway, come equipped with some kind of old faithful that you are already at ease with and know well, be it digital or film.

Don’t forget the wildcard option of getting a taxi and roaming around with a wider focus before simply asking to stop and getting out anywhere that looks interesting to you, even if it is considered plain by the locals. This is honestly not a bad idea. Bangkok is largely a pretty safe city and in broad daylight, assuming you are not behaving obnoxiously, offensively and you use your common sense, it’s perfectly ok to wander. Look around back streets and small alleyways and walkthroughs to see where normal, perhaps less well off people live. It’s really fine and the worst you have to do is find your way back to any main road before just flagging the next taxi to get back to your hotel. It might be easier and slightly safer for men than women, but on the whole this is totally doable and just needs a little confidence. The best areas for this will be away from mainstream tourist spots as the city starts to spread out a little. Go far to the East or West of the city limits or beyond if you feel up for it. Again, the great shots are everywhere in Bangkok.

For street shots with more space and air in the frame around the people, try the parks such as Lumphini, Benjakit or the two larger ones which kind of cojoin as the Suan Rotfai (railway park). Think Central Park New York or Hyde Park London but not quite as busy, on a weekday at least. That is also very close to the famous, sprawling Chatuchak market (weekends only) most easily accessed from the Morchit skytrain station. In the case of the aforementioned market, it’s quite the spectacle but a very tight squeeze indeed and market vendors might not be happy if you appear to be putting them and their wares in the frame, it’s worth being aware of this. It’s also a good place to find pickpockets plying their trade and so a foreigner with a fancy camera distracted by taking photos might be a target, doable but be warned.

As I have stumbled onto warnings, let’s get them all out of the way now lest they negate the cohesion of what follows. Don’t engage with any Thai people approaching you out of the blue, speaking English in public places. Thais are pretty shy and reserved and whilst a very friendly people, they typically don’t do this as a rule; those that do are often looking to scam you. Photographers need to know this as you will stick out as a foreigner with a camera and will certainly encounter this somewhere on your trip. Taxis are fine and a great way to get to places to shoot, even shooting from them en route can have its place but don’t get in any taxi which is already parked nearby to a tourist spot and waiting with the driver beckoning you. Walk up the road fifty or a hundred metres either way and flag a moving taxi down. Make sure he puts the meter on as soon as you get in, if not, get out immediately. Wear loose, light clothes that cover you up in the sun, sun cream for that which isn’t covered and a hat is also great to have. Need I say comfy shoes? A quick word as I struggle to stay on topic: in Thailand they do judge a book by its cover and whilst Westerners are generally viewed with respect, it’s because they are expecting you to be ‘respectable’, at least according to their perceptions and this also applies a little to how you look. You don’t have to walk around in a three-piece suit taking pictures in a tropical country but it works out better for you in general if you are not too scruffy and beach bum in your general appearance. You don’t have to wear a vest, singlet or ‘wife-beater’ kind of deal, although it’s fine at the beach. You could wear a polo shirt with a collar. You might want to wear flip flops around the city but you could wear some plain, clean Converse and compromise a little whilst still being casual and in holiday mode. Yeah, sure… Thais wear flip-flops around the place but I’m just trying to give you the inside angle a little. Not wanting to preach, I’ll move on. I only mention this at all as you will sometimes only be treated as well as you appear, really scruffy hippie Westerners are often (unbeknownst to them) looked down on by Thais who have a special name or two to stereotype such people. Not even going to go there with the cultural do’s and don’ts beyond this as it’s too far off topic for photography specifically and you need to (easily) do that homework elsewhere. Please drink more water than you feel you need to when taking pictures outside for prolonged periods of time. Patronising? Perhaps. Essential? Definitely. Use the skytrain and subway a lot and have your camera ready when you do, as the process of using this mode of transport is just as likely to yield great people shots and candids in its own right as the destinations to which it is taking you.

The very things that photographers based in Bangkok never, ever want to shoot again are probably the very things that you will love to make frames of on a Thai holiday. The ‘usual suspects’ top three would have to be tuk-tuks, temples and saffron-robed monks in any setting. Honourable mention goes to beggars and street vagrants of questionable mental health, of which there are very many in Thailand. It’s always interesting to me that whilst many photographers abhor the idea of taking seemingly exploitative pictures of the down and outs in their own, often developed countries, something about shooting tramps and beggars in far away exotic places somehow makes it all alright. They feel the need to embrace their inner ‘Steve McCurry’ about it all. Photos of real life are okay in any country to my mind, as long as you are not looking to humiliate or portray people in a way that exploits and you handle yourself respectfully… I see no issue. Then there’s the more advanced variation on the standard motifs, a monk in a mall debating the purchase of a sophisticated new smartphone model can seem surprising and an uber-original shot to photographers on holiday here at first, but trust me when I tell you it’s been done to death. Doesn’t mean you can’t do it again though, right? Flickr results for such searches will surely confirm this contention. All this is fine, one photographer’s trite stereotype is another’s brave new world and Huxley himself wrote “I want to know what passion is. I want to feel something strongly”. Shoot what you feel.

Places to perhaps not shoot:

Be aware that if going around the ubiquitous nightlife and shady bar scene, cameras have the potential to get you into trouble quite quickly, often with nefarious individuals. Pulling out a camera in a go-go bar or nightclub is usually a bad idea. In temples it is often ok but it doesn’t hurt to ask first or at least start of in a shy way and see if there are any disapproving glares to inform you of a possible faux pas in action. Certain large attractions such as the Grand Palace can be very off and on about what cameras they will and won’t allow and this can be frustrating, tripods definitely not cool here but small twisty Gorillapod affairs discreetly deployed in and out ofpetite bags can be okay. Inside the shopping mall centered society that Thailand has become in modern times, smartphones are ok but anything that looks like a dedicated camera is not a good move (but fine if on a strap and not being used). All malls and department stores typically have ‘no photo’ signs on the main entrance doors for all to see so you can’t and shouldn’t argue the point if you are asked to stop shooting. That said, even this is a lot more laid back then it should be nowadays and a quick frame snatched here or there is unlikely to elicit a defcon five response per se. Nobody asks teenagers to stop taking pictures with their smartphones of course; ironic really as these are sometimes as good as many dedicated cameras in their own right these days. Technology has blurred the lines here and old policies have not really caught up to how the world is today.

More Film shooter specific:

The X-rays in baggage scanning equipment at either of the Bangkok international airports will have no adverse effect on your film whatsoever, fogging will not occur. This is assuming the following caveats: The film speed is ISO 400 or lower. Faster film might well be ok too but I’ve never personally tested it so if in doubt, push 400 a stop or two. I prefer Tri x 400 at a two-stop push to a lot of the faster films anyway. You simply MUST take the film onto the plane with you in the cabin as carry on only, do not put film in baggage that is to go in the hold of the aircraft. If you do, all bets are off and the film will probably be ruined. Bangkok airports are perfectly film friendly otherwise as of 2016 and I have tested this personally myself countless times and continue to do so. A personal request for a close hand inspection of the film to avoid scanning, which is possible in some other countries, seems to be a bit unheard of here in my opinion. Just put it through the general scanner as you go through security as many times as they require and it’ll be fine.

Generally as with the rest of the world, film is a bit of a niche thing in Thailand these days and whilst it’s still popular with enthusiasts, Fuji Instax/Polaroiding teenagers and the younger retro hipster set, it’s not something which is that easy to find or ask about with the average person. It’s not exactly difficult though either with a little insight. For regular colour print C-41, the standard fare, cheaper Kodak Colorplus and Fuji Superia ilk can sometimes be found in small quantities in any generic Sino-Thai family owned three storey townhouse lab. That’s something that you will recognize as soon as you see one. They are prevalent all over Thailand on any large road or street. Often times, the entire three generations of family all live in it but only the ground floor houses the lab operation. The whole of the building front will likely serve as a huge sign, twenty metres high, typically a Fujifilm or Kodak colour scheme in the usual corporate branding. The operation’s longevity in the area will be determined by the extent of the sunfading of said shop front and the magnitude of the seemingly mandatory ad hoc display of photos in the ground floor window. For maximum bonus points, said display should comprise of a ‘before and after’ example of a previously considered unsalvageable torn photo from the forties (typically it’s an over zealous Photoshop job of somebody’s long deceased family member), several pictures of local civil servants wearing elaborate uniforms which bear more pips, badges and gold rope under the armpit than the most decorated war hero from The Somme and several pictures of no longer cool Thai pop-culture stars from at least seven years ago which thirty-two photo labs in the same postal code all claim to have taken. These are all your hallmarks of quality. Of course, you are still trying your luck but prints from such places are often really decent, cheap and very quick. The key word to get around the language barrier for print size is ‘jumbo’ which means slightly larger than postcard size and typically might be as little as 2 baht a print, all being well. Examples of other sizes and paper types are usually on the wall in displays that you could just point to anyway. If you’re really lucky, in addition to the popular 90’s era Fuji processing machines that are often found in such joints, you sometimes stumble over a Fuji Frontier film scanner on its last legs for facilitating ultra cheap film scans of a high quality with low labour costs. Make it clear that you want ‘no Photoshop’ if using such a service or you might well come back to find the young Thai student-intern working the scanner for a ‘child in a fake Nike factory’ wage gives you back scans or prints in which everybody has been worked over to look like an extra from The Wizard of Oz. I mention these places as they are all over every city in Thailand and there might be a perfectly good one that has all you need just doors away from where you are staying, worth having a quick look around when you first arrive. You’ll be lucky to score black and white at such an outlet but with the trendy hipster kids trying their hand with a bit of film here and there, you sometimes see a few rolls of Kentmere or something in the background.

Other cities around Thailand also have these same photo labs everywhere on the main roads and they are just as easy to find. However be advised that by now, the ones that offer film processing will be a lot less prevalent as their sole business model will typically just be making prints from digital images. It’s not cost effective for them to keep running the film machinery. There’s often just one photo lab in a small to medium sized rural Thai city that might still develop film for you and if the one you go into doesn’t have the service, they will almost certainly know which of the other labs do. They’ll tell you the name or help you find it, it’s no lost business to them after all. I know the following cities still have at least one photo lab that devs film: Chiang Mai, Chiang Rai, Phuket, Khon Kaen, Udon Thani, Kanchanaburi, Pattaya, Hua Hin, Ayutthaya, Ubon, Saraburi and Rayong (black and white, colour e41, scans and same day, often very fast development at the green Fuji shop opposite the Post Office!)I am sure that there will be equivalents of cities of at least these sizes. You’ll struggle to find anything other than colour print film once you get out of Bangkok but you can still get it in larger cities. I bought black and white film in Chiang Mai in December of 2015 and they even had devving services on offer up there as well (Photobug) which was nice to see. It was very easy to find Kodak Colorplus in different places in Chiang Mai also. Hopefully this all gives you some idea of what to expect.

For the less risk adverse, here are some Bangkok safe bets for finding film and services of a greater variety and quantity. I have no affiliation and stand to make nothing from these recommendations but these places as of 2016, will surely see you right. ‘Photogallery’ is not the easiest find up on the higher floors of Thaniya Plaza, Soi Thaniya (Skytrain station Sala Daeng) but this is probably my current number one pic. The owner is fair and honest and maintains two large commercial fridges, which are nearly always packed full of the good stuff. Kodak, Ilford, Fuji are often in stock as well as some large format and wildcard bets like those Impossible films from the Netherlands. Probably the best place to buy black and white film right now with ease in the city, if you are on holiday and don’t know the place. If you can’t get something here, you’ll still usually be able to get its equivalent in another brand and you’ll get help and advice in that regard if you need it. The shop also has lots of decent film cameras and lenses in featuring basic Japanese brands all the way up to the posh German stuff. English communication is fine. Photogallery are open Monday through Saturday from around very late morning to early evening

One of the best large labs in Thailand for doing just about anything above and beyond the basic c41 run is probably ‘Procolorlab’. Alas they are somewhat off the beaten track, hard to find and not very ‘tourist English language drop in visit’ compatible. The good news is that Photogallery regularly deal with them and so for a slight surcharge you can go through them. I mention this as it’s darned handy for something like E6 slides or having real optical enlargements done. It’s all sent by motorcycle messenger so you don’t have to do any running around. There is another lab of repute called “IQ lab” on Silom road (another branch near Ekamai) and although they have great equipment and a long standing reputation, it’s a pricier place overall and their services are a tad diminished in recent times, they stopped doing E6 altogether last year for example. Honestly though, if you’re still shooting slide film in 2016, them’s the breaks. IQ lab do scan 4 x 5 film though but it’s a place where you can get different answers to the same question on different times and some odd scenarios depending on what materials they have in stock at any given time.

'Av Camera’ is very close to BTS Saphan Taksin and an easy google find. It’s another long-running and reputable place to visit, it’s very small and well packed as the main business here is all things modern digital photography. You can easily find them and the map on their website. The owner is a nice gentleman who is typically sat at the table in the back of the shop on any given day. They also have a film selection in stock pretty much all the time, just less quantity and variety than Photogallery. Again, you can have devving of pretty much any film type outsourced through them reliably and messengered back over to the shop for pick up at a later date. This is relevant as you could go on an island hop and pick the film up on your way back through Bangkok without carrying your film everywhere you go. You can find a nice selection of secondhand film equipment and lenses for sale here on any given day also. Either shop is a good go to place for repairs in an emergency, they are certainly to be trusted in this regard but only you can decide if you have the time in Thailand to make that feasible. It’s nice to know the option is there.

A more wildcard choice is perhaps Siam Digital in Siam Square. Very easy and quick from the BTS again here with a good range of developing services and turnaround. Certainly C41, black and white and I even saw some young guy dropping off a roll of E6 there circa New Year 2016 so I know they offer it but at a slightly delayed outsourced turnaround. The rest of it is all developed by themselves in house and typically with same day service, which is nice for those on holiday and hence the reason for including them here. I have seen some mixed reviews about the quality of their processing though and have never tried them personally so I can’t promise anything here. They are a good place to find film in that area, usually a few colour choices and a fair selection on black and white from the likes of Ilford. Room temperature storage only here but that’s chilled air con temperatures anyway, or at least during office hours. If all this black and white specific processing limitation stuff puts you off, you can find Ilford XP2 chromogenic C41 process ‘pseudo’ black and white at most of the above places and then you can get that developed anywhere that does regular basic colour film processing. That opens your options up a lot for developing. To be fair, I’ve shot XP2 in bright Thai sun before and found its dynamic range to be about the most flexible that I’ve ever used and so it’s certainly a reasonable compromise option. I think you can even alter the ISO of different frames a little on the same roll and still get acceptable results back but I urge you to do your own research on that.

In the Ploenchit area (skytrain stop of the same name) you can find ‘Siam TLR’ shop on the ground floor of the Mahatun building. No experience personally but I have heard the owner is happy and friendly and there’s lots of second hand cameras to see, I suspect a few other film related services are on offer here too.

For those phototourists willing to be a little more adventurous, hop in a taxi and head to ‘Central Lad Phrao’. It’s near the very northernmost end of Chatuchak park. This is a large mall but that is not the reason to go there. The key is to just walk a short way over the main road (away from the mall) and you will see a whole collection of photo labs buildings and related businesses there directly opposite this lined along the road. Many of these places sell good selections of films and offer processing. It seems that not too many have the films in fridges but the stock is usually fresh enough. I suspect some smaller shops might buy in bulk and resell from some of these larger operations. You can get harder to find films here usually. I have bought from a great selection at ‘Photo City’ before and was happy enough. There’s also a place here in this bunch called ‘A+B Digital Lab’ which has the unusual distinction of doing fast colour processing, sometimes done in a couple of hours. You could even have lunch back over inside the mall while you wait.

Film prices vary in Thailand according to brand, but it’s not too bad overall, depending of course on where you are coming from. In general it seems to be a little cheaper than Europe for some films and a tad pricier for others. We don’t have bargains like one British pound for 24 exposure basic C41 colour rolls as per in the UK currently, for example. Some super basic films like Kodak Colorplus 36 can be snagged for around a hundred baht if you are lucky, this is very cheap for Thailand. It’s double that for the name brand quality black and white though. Some of the slightly cheaper sources are one or two well known online shops for film that are operating within Thailand from social media sites. I haven’t included those here as you generally need to be set up in Thailand with bank accounts and a home address to order so it doesn’t seem applicable to someone passing through to shoot. If you would like this info, email me through my site and I will give you up to date info.

For a nice concentration of lots of small vintage camera shops in one place, as well as some highly skilled repair people, check out Mega Plaza on Mahachai road, you’ll need a taxi to get there. There’s one shop there in particular which has quite the reputation, it’s called ‘The Eye Camera Café’ and the nice gentleman there is considered by some to be one of the best film camera repairman in the country.

There’s a guy from Hong Kong named Eddie who runs a place called ‘Camera Collection’ in Charn Issara Tower (ground floor) around the Silom Road area. It used to sell a lot of cameras and the like but he seems busier with doing paid photography in recent times I hear. He can source all the usual cameras, lenses, films and processing services that most of the already mentioned places can. I have dealt with him a few times and found the place pretty decent and straight up overall.

Traditional darkroom space hire is a real tough one and you often need to know people or friends with their own set-ups in many cases. That said, there is one which comes highly recommended called Patani Studio. The services there vary but at the time of writing (2016) it is possible to hire the studio for a day long, eight hour block of time and the only consumable you would need to bring is your own photo paper. I think the price would be around two thousand baht. You can source this through some of the aforementioned places like Photogallery perhaps or bring your own. You can find this place at 59, Soi Nana off the Charoenkrung Road. I have to be specific here. You would do very well to ask the taxi for Charoenkrung road FIRST and then find Soi Nana off this road. The reason for this is that Soi Nana is also the name of an infamous place on the lower Sukhumvit road area which has the largest concentration of hookers and go-go bars in Bangkok. Ninety-nine percent of taxi drivers are going to assume that you want to go to the latter of course. I dread to imagine the scene when you get out of the taxi there and starting asking random streetwalkers and go-go girls if they can take you to the darkroom with a red light.

What to bring general tips:

For modern digital photography, you can buy literally anything here that you would find in any other large capital city of the world in terms of consumer electronics. Reasonable prices too. Two large places are ‘Pantip Plaza’ which was at one time the country’s number one spot for electronics but has now faded somewhat from its former glory. I like ‘Fortune Town’ better myself but be forewarned that any geek could easily waste a day walking around this huge mall and not spend the time outside taking pictures. Bangkok might even be better than some large capitals in more developed countries in this regard in fact, don’t forget how much of this stuff is made in Asia. Storage media/cards of all brands and types are readily available everywhere and often people find that they can end up slightly cheaper here than back in their own countries at times. Replacement batteries for various cameras are also easily sourced both for original and off brand/grey stuff in the two large malls already mentioned. Also, Nikon stuff is made here in huge quantities to a high standard. You really don’t need have to go to these big places though as most modern photographic needs are met by at least one store in just about every large group of shops and retail space that you are likely to come across as you move around Bangkok. So, no need to bring too much in the way of ‘just in case’ items, especially if you like to pack light. For powering your camera: AC mains is generally two pin or two flat prong (both work) similar to US types ‘A’ and ‘C’ and they run 220 volts. Stuff from the UK works at the correct voltage without frying anything as long as you have the correct plug adapter. I hear US appliances might be a bit trickier but have never had to test this myself. You can often just USB charge camera batteries without too much hassle and the right cable nowadays of course if in doubt. Not to get too general I hope but I would recommend a decent umbrella June through December though, for the ladies this doubles up to keep the sun of you in true Asian (and Victorian England) style but looks extremely odd for a man to do. Don’t fear the monsoon season, bad weather makes for great photos and seeing as you are on a holiday or extended photography trip, you probably don’t have to be anywhere on time anyway. If you get caught out in the heavy rain, it might be a lot heavier than any rain you have ever seen before in your life but any Thais stuck out without the right kit will be equally stuck and you can follow their lead as people generally take shelter together wherever they can. The general rule is that the more extreme and violent the rain in Thailand, the quicker it stops and just twenty minutes can make all the difference sometimes, you are then on your way. It’s obviously harder to hail taxis in the rain. Staying close to subway and skytrain stations here can be handy during these months not only for the immediate shelter benefits but also because tropical South East Asian rainfall is often incredibly specific and narrow in terms of where it hits. It’s entirely possible that it hasn’t yet rained at all just one stop down the train line from the monsoon and it’s business as usual. Strange but true. A camera bag that doesn’t look like a camera bag and is quite small, maybe just big enough for a body and two lenses is ideal for Bangkok. Any bigger and you are inviting searches when going in and out of places plus it’s just too hot to be bogging yourself down with kit. I also personally hate having backpacks and the like with me when shooting street as I feel paranoid about undesirables looking to rifle the pockets when in squashed up close quarters around the city. Another great tip that is invaluable is to get the camera out of the bag as soon as you get back to where you are staying, don’t leave them stuffed in bags in this humidity. The flip side of this is even more important, when taking a camera and lens out of an air con room and out into the tropical heat of Thailand (especially in the Bangkok heat) you should let it slowly warm up before you use it. Lenses fog and condensation clings to film inside even pro level cameras . I sometimes forget this. Last year my incredibly reliable Rolleiflex ‘E’ had a winding error. It was actually user error as I cranked it over a tad over-zealously within two minutes of leaving a freezer box hotel room. The condensation caused just a slight slippage in the film transport and the frame spacing was off, overlapping several frames before it sorted itself out. When you’ve only got twelve shots on a roll, that’s less than ideal. It had never done this before or since; I didn’t let it settle into the humidity first. User error. Heed this advice for any kind of camera

When to shoot:

It’s pretty hot and humid in most of Thailand nearly all year round, some years the cool season never actually happens. It can be colder in the North depending on altitude and time of year but for the rest of us, it’s just plain hot and sticky. You can shoot anytime but getting up early and shooting before 10-11am is a great idea. Start with the first half of the golden hour and go from there. This is sometime between 6-6:30am most of the year. Thailand is great in that it is pretty consistent in terms of daylight hours. Although it gets dark quicker at the end of the year and following few months, it still only changes by maybe half an hour or more, moving slowly between these changes so you don’t notice it that much when you live here year round. There is also no daylight saving time to account for, which I personally love. In simple terms then, you’re talking about pretty much twelve hours on and twelve hours off, all year long. It’s good to have this constant as a photographer. By the same token, shooting from 5 to 6-6:30pm onwards for the last hour and a half of light is not only more comfortable for you but it yields the best evening light to work in also. Beyond that, shooting at night is possible for film shooters as Bangkok has a lot of bright lights and neon but obviously it’s better in more mainstream areas. Going with ISO 1600 or 3200 film is perfectly manageable with faster lenses in such places. Digital shooters can shoot round the clock with good modern kit regardless of course in many cases; this is one area where it is an eminently practical medium. A totally random suggestion that works well for this is the Khao San Road area. It is a good example of a place in Bangkok where you can shoot at night around lots of people with bars here and there and probably not cause too much trouble with a camera, yet you should trust your senses and gut feeling on a case by case basis. It’s also cool hippie ‘turn on, tune in and drop out’ central with the current wave of gap year students rolling through every year trying to look like the counter-culture yet somehow all managing to look exactly like one another in their own mandatory style. This can be good and bad depending on your age, political leanings and levels of patience for strangers and the diatribes they can unleash upon you when well lubed with alcohol. Good for night shooting though.

Taking photos in public of Thai people:

The good news here is that Thai people are incredibly laid back and very unlikely to ever be confrontational in any given situation in general, most especially in public. You can take pictures of them but don’t get too in their faces and respect personal space, which seems a bit odd at times in such a tightly crowded city. If you want good street shots, go wider in your focal length and work with a little bit of tact and finesse whenever possible. A smaller camera is better, pointing a larger DSLR with a long zoom lens right at someone might not always meet with happy responses, but then this is true anywhere in the world and so common sense applies.

Though there are exceptions, generally it’s no problem to walk around shooting street in Bangkok, you will be perceived as a tourist anyway so might as well live up to it. Basically, with a little practice of good street shooting techniques you can have an easy time of it. I highly recommend zone focusing, knowing your camera and lens very well, framing the shot in your mind before you lift the camera to eye level for fast shooting and not being too threatening or getting right in people’s face. Be a little bit stealthy and discreet but you don’t need to be overly sneaky or anything. I’ve rarely had a problem ever and truth be told, even Bruce Gilden could probably get away with it here, for a short while at least. A golden rule in Thailand in general that many people learn on day one (and then forget almost immediately) also applies brilliantly to public photography here: If you smile, Thais will not be able to get angry with you. If it sounds simple, that’s because it is. Remember this, if you are caught taking a candid that you feel didn’t go down well and it has elicited frowns or other such faces of displeasure…humble, friendly smiles and walk away. That’s all you need to know.

In Bangkok, a very basic kind of simple survival English is known to some, even though the overall standard for the country is poor. You can get shop assistants to deal with you and make a sale (or at least find someone in their team who can try) but when shooting on the street, it’s actually often useful to simply remain silent and hide behind the language barrier. This is coming from a photographer who has studied and practiced their language diligently for twenty years and has the option to use fluent Thai if needed. I’m not a fan of people who don’t make the effort to learn the language in a foreign land in general but in this scenario, I just happen to think that the ‘silent smile, slightly bowed head and keep it moving’ technique is the best communication for the situation and I’ve tested this extensively for a long time with positive results. Trust me. Please be aware that upcountry and away from tourist hotspots, the locals will be less likely to see lots and lots of foreigners and so they might react a little differently to you but that doesn’t automatically mean in a bad way. It just might be that you are an odd or unexpected sight in their day. They might also be a little more shy but it’s also highly likely that they’ll be very friendly. Your chances at blending in and being stealthy will diminish somewhat in these locales. Honestly, Thailand is just such a great place to shoot.

That is my advice and a general guide for photographers of both film and digital media for shooting in Bangkok but most of this applies pretty much as well for the rest of Thailand also. It’s a work in progress and I’ll keep adding things to it. Thanks for reading.

2017 UPDATES

The year of 2016 in Thailand was hectic, stressful and contained much distress for the Thai population at large. Regardless of these circumstances, it seems that the film shooters here were just as busy as ever, if not much more so. The sales of film in Thailand this year have been reported as very brisk indeed according to several well known suppliers and retailers of film that I have spoken to. I personally had the experience this year of either buying up the last of a pack of favourite film type at a certain shop or just being pipped to the post by someone else buying the last packs in stock the day before. I usually have a good stock in the freezer at home but there were one or two times this year where I actually had to wait a week or so before I could get the exact films I wanted.

Another interesting development (pun probably not intended) is that Thais have been increasingly getting into medium and large format photography and buying more of this size of film. 120 rolls and sheet films have been selling very well and there has been quite the upturn of MF and LF cameras changing hands. You won't see a big Linhof sitting around unsold for months like you often used to just a few years back. This is easy to follow as a trend, not only from direct communication with those vendors in the industry in bricks and mortar establishments, but also from following the sales of cameras on Thai language sites and internet forums. From various sources such as websites and podcasts, it appears that in the U.S. in recently, good quality MF film gear such as Hassies and Rollies have been going up in price and selling out very quickly. I am not sure if this is a knock on effect back here in Thailand or just a general echoing of such changes but I’ve seen a similar scenario overall in Bangkok this year.

In fact, one can even take this to a generally broader argument and suggest that many (but not all) good film cameras seem to be going north in price, at least more so than normal. A lot of young people are driving the demand, that much is clear and seems to apply here as much as anywhere. Trading of Leica glass has been really quite busy this year. One dealer I know sometimes looks like the floor of a stock exchange (on a good weekend) with punters cramming in elbow to elbow and snapping up freshly imported Leica glass from Japan. The good German stuff is (I mean in good condition, do they make any bad stuff?) changing hands very quickly and often facilitating the need to act fast if you want apotentially popular item. It goes in spits and starts at times though with seemingly nobody wanting that 35' lux for a few weeks and then five people fighting over it all at once. A key difference of late is that a lot of the younger Thai crowd that have been buying the Leitz lenses in recent years to use with mirrorless gear seem to have graduated up to just buying Leica bodies (both digital AND film) to mount them on instead. It seems that even though the likes of the Sony bodies are better digital cameras than a lot of the Leica stuff, people just soon want to plug and play these lenses with the native cameras instead. I have seen really big increases in demand for the Pentax Super Takumar vintage lenses peaking to be much higher than just a few years ago when I last owned any of them. There are dealers with whole drawers and dry cabinets filled with nothing but SMC Super Takumar and the like around in Bangkok currently. This is a trend that I can easily agree with. These lenses are sometimes referred to by one respected dealer I know in Bangkok as 'Leica Japan' and the quality of the glass and the images they produce are truly amazing. I have some classic shots of loved ones that I took with these lenses in years gone by that I really cherish. I would say that in Bangkok now these are definitely a current trend and very popular for use with the adapters on all of the mirrorless bodies, I have seen these kind of rigs all over the city on numerous recent outings.

For film labs I still highly recommend Procolorlab, Patani Studio (ring first as this guy is often out shooting and he has become busier in 2016, he also still does E6 slides on site with good work and turnaround!) and relative newcomers Airlab doing great work and winning over a whole lot of people (although, be aware that it’s jam packed at certain times and especially weekends as a wall to wall hipster central, consider yourself warned). They are all on Google and Facebook under the above names and all of them update their pages pretty regularly. Do try all the generic photolab 'Mom and Pop' townhouse stores in Bangkok (read the original full article above for more details on these) near where you are staying though as it's often surprising how many seemingly defunct looking places will still process C41 though. For B and W you will need to stick with the specialist labs or do your own (highly recommended anyway). As always, a good soft option still might be to try a chromogenic like Ilford XP2 (very often in stock at Photogalleryshop) if you wanna shoot B and W here and get it developed easily and locally whilst you are still in Thailand. I always think of this as a tourist’s dream option for B and W on holiday with no hassles if you can’t wait to get back to your own country and develop.

Here follows some more extensive detail on other good shops at the current time and also repairs, spares and specialist work which have not yet been covered in depth on this article before:

Get a taxi to take you to ‘Mega Plaza’ in an area often simply known as ‘Wang Burapha’ (also known as the ‘Saphan Lek’ area). You’ll easily find it on Google maps but it is a real pig to get to and so I just recommend a taxi ride. You can't mistake it once it's in your line of sight, surrounded by (real) gun shops, it has a huge sign in English and the whole place is garish orange from the outside. It's a six storey, medium sized mall which is most famous for being the centre of all things geeky and toys. This is the place people come to for knock off Chinese Lego, BB guns, real Gundam kits, hobby supplies, RC cars/planes, Playstations and games etc. It's probably one of the best places in Thailand for all of the above. That's not why you should go there however. If you go up to the fifth floor on the escalators in the very middle of the building (don't get that wrong as there are two sets) you can then turn to your right as you get off at that floor and you will find yourself in vintage camera sales and repair heaven. There are more than twenty or thirty tiny little shops (rented booths in all honesty but some are more grand and ‘shop-like’ than others) here offering all things good in camera land, with a heavy bias towards film bodies. In fact, this is the only place in Thailand where you could approach a dealer, ask about repairs for your camera and the first thing that they will say is …' We ONLY repair film cameras!" How's that for a rare response in this day and age?

This little zone is only about half of the size of the entire mall on this floor but what you can't find here, probably doesn't exist anywhere in Thailand. They have it all, including some really left field and esoteric stuff like a Leica MDa or perhaps a Speedgraphic for the weekend sir? Several of the little shops here are purely repairs only with some very well respected and capable repair techs plying their trade in full swing. This is the place you come to make the impossible possible. I have seen guys here repairing things like Nikon F5's and they just happen to have that 'whole board' or just the one LCD section that you need and they can somehow get it all together and working again. You know that is not an easy service to find but this is the place. They can work wonders on mechanical stuff, I have recently discovered that some of the already recommended retail shops in this guide send their camera repairs to guys in this place and then add on their small commission on top so if you are not in a rush and feeling brave, you could theoretically cut out the middle man and take a chance on dealing directly with skilled techs yourself. The obvious problem here might be the language barrier though, especially if the fault were intermittent or hard to describe. For more obvious camera problems or if you had a Thai friend to help explain, it would be fairly straightforward. This is no Tokyo camera shop but by local standards, there are some great shops here with decent inventories of great film cameras and also worth a look for classic (and sometimes modern) glass even for digital shooters of course. One problem here though is some of the vendors are unrealistic about pricing at times and approaching them as a foreigner with no Thai language skill is certainly unlikely to help them ‘re-evaluate’ their pricing. You can also find lots of film types for sale, there is a good general variety although often not in massive quantities. Lots of places here will also have a wide range of photographic accessories of a very specific nature that might be hard to source elsewhere so if you have a tricky and weird item to source, this place is your best bet (filter of an odd size, mechanical cable release anyone?)

So, whilst at Mega Plaza then, and to try and be as helpful as possible, I would like to add a newcomer or two to the recommend dealers list (no affiliation and like all recommendations on my website these are actual people that I have personally bought from and had good experiences and been treated well). 'TheEye2' camera shop (unit B507 with a yellow sign, it's small and not easy to find, if you do a 180 degree u turn when getting off the escalator on the 5th floor and walk back on yourself to the back of the building, you'll find it straight ahead). The lady owner is friendly and fair and will haggle with you a bit. You can also trade in and trade up etc. She has a large selection of classic Leica glass at all times but also lots of other great stuff. She is also directly connected to somebody reputable in another unit on the 5th floor who only does repairs but it's better to go through her first as the repair guy is not much of a one for friendly chit-chat and the price isn't any higher if you go through her as they are connected. Again, this store is on Facebook under thatname and they are very active with almost daily updates of what's in stock at any given time.

Just for a quick recap then my personal names and places of people who are good to deal with for glass and bodies (and usually film) and who won't rip you off, as of Jan 2017:

Kuhn Boonlue (a great guy) at Photogallery Shop (on facebook) inside Thaniya Plaza Sala Daeng, Silom, Bangkok (connected directly to the BTS Skytrain! Nice old glass, Leica bodies and lenses, good MF and LF equipment. Still probably my fave place for buying large amounts of film which is kept in a proper fridge!

Khun Mana (a very well known and reputable fair chap) at 'AV Camera' (close to Saphan Taksin BTS station and also on Facebook) Large selection of used Leica glass here! Their used section on their website is updated daily with prices and clear descriptions.

Khun Meow (fair and friendly woman trader) at TheEye2, 5th floor Mega Plaza, Wang Burapha, Sapah Lek, Bangkok.

I also find ‘The Shutter’ (another medium sized store just a few doors away from ‘TheEye2’ in the corner of the same floor) to be very good and fairly priced for all brands and lenses in great condition but their prices are good to start with and they really don’t want to haggle at all. The lady there is friendly and a patient, smiley type.

The first two are closed on Sundays, Khun Meow might be open then. I wouldn't go to any of them until at least lunchtime, but no later than 6pm.

Although this is veering into true caveat emptor territory, and might not be the most practical for shooters passing through Bangkok for short trips, I still would like to add something into this guide about direct, private sales of second hand cameras and lenses in Bangkok. A brave wildcard option might also be to try your hand at deals with the public and buying from somebody in Bangkok directly. Obviously the usual warnings apply and you need to decide what levels of risk you are comfortable with. It also helps if you are buying things that you know a bit about. The best webpage for my money in this area of the local Bangkok market (but also applies to other cities in Thailand) would be to google (ThaiDphoto) and click on the uppermost google search linked page. You actually don’t need to read Thai to see the equipment name for sale (nearly always in English) or the price and phone number in Arabic numerals. This is the buying and selling room of what was once a very small and quite irrelevant little site which by chance happened to become one of the busiest camera equipment trading rooms online for the whole of Thailand. The page is constantly being added to with new threads for stuff for sale all the time. A busy day might be forty new threads. This is strictly the domain for those who can get someone to speak Thai and help them with any transaction. Most people want to meet up at a Skytrain or MRT subway station and do a deal there in a large public place so it's not too dangerous on the whole as long as you use common sense. I mention this as somebody on holiday in Thailand could easily get a hotel receptionist to make the call, offer a price and get the seller to come and wait for you at an agreed time in the hotel lobby where you are staying on the skytrain or somewhere. This would be easy and quite safe and all on CCTV with security guards around the place so there's really no reason why not. You will find most sellers are happy to meet up with you and so this option is just something I thought I would throw out there as there is a brisk trade on such sites and you might well see somebody selling a lens or body that you really want right now and you just need a local to make one phone call to make it all happen. I have bought a few items from people on this website and had great experiences myself. There are certainly dealers on here also, either masquerading as private sellers or just happy to fess up to using this as an additional channel to their existing business, perhaps under a different name or whatever. No Ebay fees or Paypal nonsense though, you see, you touch, you like and you buy, or not as the case may be. You will have to decide what is best for you and what you are happy with. It's easier to check something like a lens there and then maybe, a mechanical film body might have a hidden fault that doesn't show up for a couple of minutes when you first look at it with a view to buy, like a lazy shutter in a Rollieflex that the guy makes sure he gets loosened up just before he meets you. All things that need to be considered I guess.

APRIL 2017 UPDATE:

Please be advised that as of recent months, IQ Labs no longer do any colour 35mm (c41) processing whatsoever, this applies to both Ekamai and Silom branches. No big deal really as there are lots of other options out there and IQ tended to be on the pricey side with varying consistency in their service and how they dealt with people at times. It's also yet another great reason to shoot B+W and develop yourself at home anyway!

AUGUST 2017 UPDATE:

Recently, a reader quite rightly pointed out to me that I had somehow overlooked 'Fotofile'. I was sure that I hadn't but when I checked, turns out I had. Thanks for the heads up! So, Fotofile is a chain of shops, been around for about twenty five years or so. Most of them are just everyday, common or garden modern, digital camera and accessories shops. Nothing wrong with that. The two branches in the chain which warrant a mention are, in the first instance, The ground floor branch in the MBK centre (BTS Siam or National Stadium Area). This is a small shop about half way back in the centre, near the main side entrance which lies under the pedestrian bridge crossing that takes you to the Siam Square side of the main road. This shop sells all the new stuff as well as LOADS of good second hand lenses and digital (AND) film camera bodies. A real haven for fans of Canon and Nikon mount glass, lots to choose from, you can fondle and haggle a little. Not much in the way of huge discounts here though for sure. The pricing often seems a little bit too arbitrary for my liking, as though it depended solely on the mood of the person who put the lens in the display case on any given day. Still a pretty decent little place to check out though for sure, they have a small selection of films for sale there although not usually kept in a fridge (unlike Photogallery in Thaniya Plaza). There's another branch of Fotofile that goes under another name 'Camera and Lens' inside Central Rama 3 and this is a cute mash up of a small but fully authorised Leica dealer and a kind of glossy display of older Leica gear in the vein of a mini-museum. As well as looking cool and being quite interesting if you are into the red dot, it's also a branch that seems unusually good at procuring hard to find Leica parts such as older, obscure hoods and filters etc. At least that was the experience that I myself had there a couple of years ago. Recommended if you like that sort of thing.

'CAMERA COLLECTION' at the Charn Issara Tower in Silom seems to have moved in recent times. I was there yesterday in that building and was surprised to find that old shop is now a hair salon! A little investigating on their social media posts and it seems that they have moved here instead:

River city 3rd floor as Hummingbird foto. 23 Trok Rongnamkhaeng, Si Phraya Pier, Yota Road, Sampantawong, Bangkok 10100, Thailand. Please feel free to meet me (The owner Eddie, NOT anyone from Chromacomaphoto.com) there! (Please make an appointment)

There hasn't been a lot of activity on that Facebook page since they posted the new address a few months ago so let's hope that no news is good news and Mr. Eddie is still in business. Any reader of this blog who can either confirm or deny (a bad skill set if you want to work for the U.S. government, I'm sure) that 'Camera Collection' is doing okay at the new venue, feel free to drop me a line at the address shown on the bottom of this (or any) page on this site. Thanks.

OCTOBER 2017 UPDATE:

As I only like to recommend places or services that I have personally used or have been used by people who I know and trust, here follows some more detail as of October.

There is a lab up in Chiang Mai (in addition to Photobug, which is already in this guide) which has been running for a while now. It's run by two young ladies who were ex students of the local university there and who previously formally studied film photography and darkroom work. It's always nice to deal with people who also have a personal interest in the work themselves. They were known for a time on Facebook (and at the actual shop) as 'Ung Handcraft Darkroom Shop and Gallery' and that was the name with which I was still calling them. However, the same outfit is now seemingly known by another name 'Rakuda Photo Aritsans' and is still at the same place, it's a first facebook hit on Google presently under that name and so an easy lookup for their current preferred contact details/phone number etc. They even do push/pulling processing B+W and C-41 etc so it's a pretty legit service.

I know two people close to me who have used the services of the above place, under both of those different trading names. General feedback was pretty good and the ladies there are generally well-informed, happy and friendly. One possible complaint though was that the service was a bit too laid back and opening times, developing times and (especially) finished post-dev film and scans collection times should be taken with a pinch of salt. (to that point, the Facebook page of the old shop appears to even show a dialogue from an unhappy foreign customer who had to wait an hour later than the usual shop opening time to get his negs back, only to then discover five minutes before boarding his flight that they had even given him the wrong negs back, yikes!). DO NOT leave important stuff such as developing films here down to the last minute if you are facing a time critical situation such as needing them for a project or you are leaving the country with the films and scans the next day etc. Never mind what the shop tells you, it's not worth the stress, there's a good chance things can mess up.

The stuff is ready when it's ready and this might well be different from what you are actually told. This is a good rule of thumb to follow in general for almost all of the places mentioned in the guide to be honest. Things work here in Thailand in a very different way to Western countries. They might open today at the stated time, they might not. They might open later than normal or they might be closed on that day despite what it says on the door. You might get your film back today, or you might not. We might have the film in stock that we told you we had over the phone before you arrived, or we might not The customer is NOT always right in Thailand and your consumer rights are massively diminished compared to Western Europe or the States. This is not a critique of Thai culture, this is NOT a moan, this is merely an observation and one that you are highly advised to try and accept if at all possible...'cos you sure as hell ain't gonna change it :-)

I am often a fan of the wall of photolabs and film shops opposite Central Lad Phrao, they are accurately mentioned above in this guide already quite a bit. I just thought I'd mention them again today as although I rarely shoot colour, I did recently and got my stuff devved at 'Color Image' in the main row of shops there (02 9392624) and had nice results indeed. As this is very recent, I know this labs output is currently excellent and so I shall mention one of these shops specifically by name for a change as they deserve some credit. There are many others right there with similar services of course.

You'll also get B+W devved around there easily enough but personally I still highly recommend you to develop your own if at all possible.

Patani studio still going strong, still doing B+W, C-41 colour and even yes, wait for it....STILL doing E6, what a legend! His scans are as good as his wet prints, the lab space and time is still available for rent. The guy is also a real enthusiast,not just doing it from a business point of view, which is always nice. He does go out and about and shoot quite a bit so never a bad idea to contact him first, Facebook etc

A number of people have told me great things about 'Neno Camera' and lab on Lad Phrao Soi 80. (082 3535263 for Thai, if you wish to try and communicate with them in English, this number might be better:081-830-5630.). He's apparently a really well-versed gentleman and I think has even taught certain aspects of film and lab work before in a formal educational context. They are a good source of film and their Facebook page says (in Thai) that they also have darkroom rental available. Looks like they can handle 35mm, medium format and even large format in it too! Their enlargers seem to be top notch and they seem to also offer darkroom workshops from time to time, although these are aimed at Thais, in Thai one would assume. Some nice development stuff is also sometimes seen for sale on their facebook page, one to watch. I will have to say though that although I am certain it looks really good, I haven't yet personally been there or used them myself so I will not officially give them the Chromacoma gold standard recommendation until then. Probably will go there soon however, and as always...I will keep updating this info on an ongoing basis.

DECEMBER 2017 UPDATE (end of year round-up):

Thanks to everybody who comes to this site for keeping up with me and checking back here again to see what is going on.

In the last two months I have seen the normal general trend of young people walking around with vintage film cameras ramped up to an eleven out of ten on the usual scale. One day last month whilst walking and shooting around Chinatown, I saw a line of young university student girls (maybe a dozen strong) and nearly a half of them were packing 70's and 80's film SLR's. I stopped and chatted to a couple of them and they really were shooting film, it wasn't just a case of kids toting cameras around with no film inside for cool points. I know that Thai photography courses at main universities often still require students to shoot on film only for the first year and also to do their own dev and darkroom work, which I think is a great idea. However, the young people whom I often see are not always uni students, they are just an increasing large group of young people shooting film per se.

This is supported by the fact that whilst walking around Mega Plaza lately, I noticed the vendors who used to sell a little film here and there and maybe had no more than fifty rolls in stock often now sell a much, much larger volume and a greater variety too. When talking to such vendors they also confirmed that the huge surge in film trade throughout this year is definitely due to larger numbers of younger people buying film in Bangkok right now. Nice to see.

I had experience of using 'Neno Camera' and lab on Lad Phrao Soi 80. (082 3535263 for Thai, if you wish to try and communicate with them in English, this number might be better:081-830-5630.) I didn't tell them beforehand that I run this website or that I was looking to share reports of their service. The results were great. I heard through a Thai local pro recently that Khun Neno (rhymes with 'Hey-ho' NOT with 'Nemo'!) bypasses the local Fujifilm suppliers and directly imports everything, including all the E6 chemicals, for his processing. The film devving there is really nice and clean, just as with Patani Studio...perhaps the only other really solid choice if you are shooting positive film. All film devving at Neno's place has been worthy of a Chromacoma recommendation this far for sure so I am happy to report and share that with my readers.

The branch of 'PhotoCity' that had been inside Central Pinklao for many years (formerly in the basement with the green 'Fujifilm' stickered up windows near the pharmacies and then in a newly reopened unit on the 3rd floor following the renovation of the whole mall two years ago) has closed in the last month or two. This was owned and operated by the same family as their main branch and namesake opposite Central Lad Phrao (amongst that row of so many small photolabs there that are always stocked with film and great, fast devving options, read the full guide above again for more info if you missed that). Anyway, the sister (or cousin?) branch at Pinklao was very laid back, as in... to the point of horizontal, and were rarely if ever on top of anything. I mean they were seriously all over the place service wise even by local standards and so this is not really news that comes as any great shock. The good news however is that the main branch business at Lad Phrao is certainly very much alive and kicking with business as usual. The bad news for anyone in the West Bangkok/Pinklao area is that although very slow and messy, the service did usually end up coming through and they used to send film and scanning work (Fuji Frontier to a high standard) back and forth via messenger to the mothership branch. Quite handy if you live out that way and shoot film as there are not so many great options that way really. Oh well, never mind.

Keep checking back for updates throughout 2018 on this page and also click below or on the tabs on the right for the specific and highly detailed blow by blow shooting guides series for individual places around Bangkok.

This is the current state of play and, as always, this article will be added to with as much up to date information as possible.

APRIL 2018 UPDATE:

Thanks very much to a kind reader named Devlin for drawing the 'Polaroid Bar' to my attention, they are are a fairly new, family run outfit with a whole cafe/bar concept revolving around all things Polaroid. A nice idea and a fun place to go and check out. You can find it quite a ways out of town off the Rama 9, heading out more towards the airport in an area that I would say still just about comes under the heading of 'Hua Mak" (sounds like Mark) to locals. Closed on Monday through Thursday, which seems a bit odd so I thought it worth mentioning in case it ruins somebody's trip there. Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays, 13:00-18:00 hrs only. Found on Facebook under the name 'PolaroidBar' and they are on 7 Khwaeng Hua Mak, Khet Bang Kapi, Krung Thep Maha Nakhon 10240, Thailand +66 80 444 5603. I have no affiliation whatsoever but the place comes recommended by two Chromacoma followers so I will include it here.

CLICK HERE FOR 'PLACES TO SHOOT IN BANGKOK' (MY HIGHLY DETAILED, INDIVIDUAL GUIDES ON POTENTIAL PHOTOGRAPHIC HOTSPOTS IN BANGKOK)

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kayskasmoviereviews · 7 years ago

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Movie Review Catch-up for Fall 2017

I’ve had a busy semester and haven’t had time to review everything I’ve seen in quite a while. It’s been too long now for me to post individual reviews for each and every movie I’ve seen the last few months, but I’m going to post here a list of quick mini-reviews for each one I saw on DVD or streaming. I will later make individual reviews for those films I’ve seen in the theater this past semester. Here are the 37 movies I’ve seen outside the theater since my last update:

Split - M. Night Shaymalan is well and truly back with this fun, weird, twisted movie. I genuinely enjoyed it quite a bit, and was pleasantly surprised both by its overall quality and by its ultimate direction.

Murder by Death - Okay, so, yeah, Peter Sellers doing a yellow-face Asian caricature as the Charlie Chan-parody character is pretty racist, and definitely would not fly today. Still, this is a fun, funny movie with affectionate parodies of Poirot, Sam Spade, Nick and Nora Charles, Miss Marple, and other classic detective fiction characters. If you like Young Frankenstein, you’d probably like this movie too.

Metropolitan - Whit Stillman’s first film is a weird little delight. His gift for impossibly mannered dialogue and witty satire is fully evident from the beginning of his career. I wish this guy got the chance to make his movies more often.

Suzanne’s Career - I did not find Eric Rohmer’s second of the Six Moral Tales series as memorable as the first, The Bakery Girl of Monceau. In fact, I barely remember anything about this movie a few months after watching it. Ah well.

Starman - John Carpenter’s late-70s to early-80s run of films is one to be envied. He mastered so many different tones while generally staying within the rules of genre cinema - suspenseful in Halloween, horrifying in The Thing, campy and goofy in Big Trouble in Little China, satirical in They Live. Here he does sweet and romantic, and it works. Jeff Bridges’s performance as an alien is awesome.

Colossal - A sneaky, brilliantly written movie that at first seems like a fun mash-up of romantic comedy and Godzilla movie, but turns out to be something darker and more serious than that. A great example of a film built on a single, smart metaphor.

War on Everyone - This is a genuinely awful movie,which is a huge disappointment considering that the writer-director John Michael McDonagh’s previous film Calvary is one of my all-time favorites. I don’t know what went wrong here, but I hope McDonagh course-corrects.

Your Sister’s Sister - This is a cute, emotionally keen little indie drama. If you know who Mark Duplass is, you know the types of movies he does. This is one of them. Not the best example of the style he’s associated with, but a solid one.

Bob Roberts - This early ’90s political satire, written and directed by and starring Tim Robbins, is only kind of funny, but it’s insanely perceptive of how the American right manipulates and deludes people. It foreshadows the rise of Trump in many ways. It’s good enough to make you wish Robbins had more of a directing career than he’s had.

A Single Man - This visually stunning first film by the fashion designer Tom Ford centers on a melancholy performance by Colin Firth at his best. It’s definitely a movie for people who appreciate thoughtful storytelling and imagery.

Filth - Fuck this movie. It sucks.

Gerald’s Game - This claustrophobic thriller/horror movie makes the most out of its single main location and an excellent performance by Carla Gugino. This is a very solid Stephen King adaptation, and is consistently engaging for the way it constantly teeters on the edge of absolute horror.

Stray Dog - This early Kurosawa film isn’t his most exciting or visually distinctive, but it’s still a solid crime drama and a fascinating glimpse into Tokyo right after World War II.

Incendies - This was the breakout film for director Denis Villenueve, who went on to direct masterpieces like Arrival, Blade Runner 2049, and Prisoners. It doesn’t quite have the stunning visuals of his later films, of course, but this drama benefits from an insanely strong script and storytelling. It hits you quite hard.

The Duke of Burgundy - This is a genuinely one-of-a-kind film. It’s a meditative, visually lush character study about two women in an intense lesbian S&M relationship. They live in a beautiful European countryside somewhere, in a society that apparently consists only of female entomologists. It’s truly weird. I was engrossed by it.

In the Loop - This acidic satire from Veep creator Armando Iannucci isn’t hilariously funny, but its jabs do land well thanks to an uncompromising performance by Peter Capaldi.

Man from Reno - Here’s an interesting oddity - a half-Japanese-language, half-English-language contemporary film noir about a Japanese novelist taking a vacation in San Francisco and getting caught up in a criminal’s web. It’s odd, stylish, and unpredictable.

Headhunters - This Norwegian crime thriller starts out promising to be an Ocean’s Eleven-style heist thriller about a smooth art thief, but that promise turns out to be a deliberate lie. What it actually is is a totally bonkers chase movie that turns out to be way more violent and chaotic than you were led to believe it would be. Highly recommended.

Meek’s Cutoff - I really liked this extremely slow-paced feminist anti-Western, but most people probably wouldn’t. The movie deliberately downplays everything you expect from the Western genre to instead focus on an unforgiving, harshly realistic portrayal of settlers who have no real idea where they’re going or how to get there. It’s up there with Valhalla Rising in terms of “this is how history actually would have looked and felt, and it kind of sucks” movies.

We Are Still Here - What at first poses as a quiet, “oh the ghosts are metaphors for something” quasi-horror movie takes a sharp left turn into full-blown, ultraviolent horror insanity. Kudos to the effects people, and to the actors for putting up with it.

An American Werewolf in London - I have to admit I was actually kind of disappointed by this one, given its minor-classic reputation. Sure, the werewolf effects are amazing, and Griffin Dunne is a ton of fun in a supporting role, but the romance is incredibly forced, and the story abruptly just ends on a really nothing note. The script needed more work in this case.

A Monster Calls - Beautiful, well-acted, incredibly moving drama about a boy facing the possibility of life without his terminally-ill mother. It made my friend Laura sob.

Lake Mungo - A genuinely spooky Australian horror movie posing as a documentary about a girl who haunted her family after her drowning death. This movie understands way better than most how to make something incredibly creepy without trying too hard.

Thesis - A gripping, quasi-Hitchcockian Spanish thriller about a film-studies student who discovers the existence of a snuff film in which she knows the victim. The ending does feel a bit disappointing, but the build-up is superb.

Wes Craven’s New Nightmare - This is the only Nightmare on Elm Street movie I’ve seen besides the original, and it’s pretty fun. The metafictional concept for the movie - Freddie Kreuger breaks out of the movies and into “the real world,” targeting the actress who played the heroine of the first movie - is very clever and thoroughly integrated into the entire story. The scares and special effects are mostly fun. My only problem, oddly enough, was that Freddie himself wasn’t really characterized enough.

Stretch - I can kind of see what Joe Carnahan was going for here, but the end result just kind of sucks.

My Life as a Zucchini - This is a beautifully animated, sweet, moving film about orphans. Despite the cute stop-motion style, the film is honest about the pain and trauma its characters experience.

Trick ‘r Treat - This campy little anthology horror movie doesn’t add up to much more than some creative special effects, a fun monster character, some darkly humorous scenes, and an overall feeling of mischievous fun, but that’s fine. I think the film largely does what it sets out for, and it eventually led the director to the superior Krampus.

Dark Star: H.R. Giger’s World - This documentary captures the surrealist artist H. R. Giger in the final year of his life. Giger was best known for designing the Xenomorph creature in Ridley Scott’s Alien, but he produced decades’ worth of dark, unsettling art on either side of that film. The movie doesn’t follow a standard biographical format, but gives you a thorough look at his late life.

Dragon - This is a visually engaging, exciting, often funny martial-arts/detective film starring the great Donnie Yen and Takeshi Kaneshiro. It’s an oddball film, and the ending may not be satisfying for some, but I quite enjoyed it.

Gremlins - Somehow I had never seen this wonderful little horror-comedy classic before, but I finally did on Thanksgiving. The story is only serviceable (I can barely remember the protagonist now), but that’s fine, because this movie is all about them gremlins. And boy, do they gremlin it up. It’s just so much fun, of the kind you only really find in those pre-CGI ’80s movies.

Stations of the Cross - This intense, aesthetically rigorous German drama about a fanatical Catholic teen is a harrowing and moving experience. The movie is made with only 14 individual shots, each of them lasting for quite a long while, and each scene paralleling one of the stations of the cross from Jesus’ crucifixion. Not light, obviously, but a great film.

Henry Fool - This strange, novelistic comedy-drama from ’90s indie filmmaker Hal Hartley is a weird, mannered, sometimes-ironic, sometimes-not study of the relationship between a pretentious would-be artist and a garbage-man who might actually be a great poet. There are tons of jarring tonal shifts and out-of-the-blue incidents in this film’s long run-time, yet it all feels of a piece, somehow.

Knights of Badassdom - I liked the premise of this film, and I’m convinced a good movie could have been made with the same premise (and even some of the same cast), but this one ain’t it. The end product is sloppy and tonally adrift, and the ending in particular is incredibly stupid and unsatisfying. I wish this movie were way better than it is.

Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry - This is an intimate documentary about the contemporary Chinese artist, activist, and social-media personality Ai Weiwei. The movie follows him in the creation of some of his art pieces, his encounters with Chinese authorities, and his attempts to communicate with the people of China. I came away from the movie very persuaded of the social value of Weiwei’s efforts to stand-up to the repressive communist regime in China, but less persuaded about the intrinsic interest of some of his art.

Phoenix - This stylishly-made German drama in some ways replays Hitchcock’s Vertigo in 1946 Berlin. The film follows a Holocaust survivor (Nina Hoss) who, apparently rendered unrecognizable by facial reconstructive surgery, is recruited by her unwitting husband (who may have betrayed her) to pretend to be...herself. It’s like Hitchcock without as much suspense or immediate danger. The ending is excellent.

To Have and Have Not - As others have pointed out, this 1944 Humphrey Bogart movie in many ways plays like a rip-off of a certain 1942 Humphrey Bogart movie called Casablanca. I mean, in both films, you have Bogart playing a cynical American ex-patriate living in a foreign location and getting roped into schemes to smuggle French resistance fighters under the nose of corrupt local authorities at great risk to himself, while falling in love with a woman. There’s even a piano player featured prominently in both. Ultimately, this movie isn’t as good or as memorable as Casablanca, but then most aren’t. On its own terms, it’s still quite a solid film. Bogart’s as appealing as ever, and Lauren Bacall oozes sexy confidence. Walter Brennan is pretty fun in a supporting part as well.

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samuelfields · 7 years ago

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How To Invest In Speculative Investments Like Bitcoin Without Losing Your Shirt

In late 1999 I had my Bitcoin moment. I was a 22 year old first year analyst working on the international trading floor at a major investment bank. The internet boom was peaking and I had just gotten my year end stub bonus of $20,000. Although the $20,000 magically turned into $12,000 after paying New York City taxes, for the first time in my life I no longer felt poor.

I took $3,000 of my bonus proceeds and invested in a company called Vertical Computer Systems Inc (VCSY). I didn’t know much about it. All I remember was that it was a China internet play with a telephone dial pad as its home page. I was on the Emerging Markets team and spent all my time looking at Asian and Eastern European plays. Surely, VCSY was going to be the next Yahoo!

In a couple weeks, VCSY went from around $3 to $6, did an inexplicable 20-for-1 stock split and then went up to around $9. In other words, within six months it went from $3 to $180 pre-split and I had 1,000 shares.

The stock’s 6,000% move was ridiculous as everybody I knew on the Street started piling into the name. I eventually got out of the stock at around $156 a share, netting a cool $153,000.

Realizing VCSY was 95% luck and 5% being in the right place at the right time, I sat on the cash for a couple years, watching the NASDAQ implode before finally getting the guts to use all my after-tax proceeds to buy a $580,000 condo in San Francisco with a $464,000 mortgage in 2003.

In retrospect, I should have kept hunting for new VCSY’s every year. However, while my wealth continued to grow, I was too afraid to lose even small amounts of money. The dotcom crash had scarred my investing psyche because I personally knew many people who lost both their jobs and their paper fortunes. The subsequent housing bubble crash was even more devastating because so many more people were affected.

If only there was a system I could follow that would give me the confidence to consistently swing for the fences without losing my shirt.

Investing In Speculative Investments Without Losing Everything

We know we can get rich by gaining Maximum Exposure to risk assets in a bull market. We also know we can get rich by building a business where we own all the equity. The downside with leveraging up to buy property and stocks or forsaking a steady paycheck to start a company is the potential to lose A LOT of money and time.

What if there was a way to strike it rich without taking any risk? I never really thought about this possibility until a reader brought it up. Previously, I’ve always just allocated between 5% – 10% of my investable assets and swung for the fences.

Here’s what DoneAt53 wrote to another reader who is worried about current market valuations:

Start going to cash. Find a long term CD that pays 2.5% or toss money into savings bonds. With the proceeds buy S&P500 options. With 100K, you can use the $2,500 – $4,000 interest, depending on your risk free choice to purchase Dec 2018 265 options for 1400 each. Two will cost you $2,800 and you’ll have a 53% participation ratio, buy a third for a total of $4,200 and sell 2, Dec 2018 295’s for $200 credit each. You’ll have a 78% participation ratio up to 295 (11%) and 26% participation ratio above that and it will cost $3800 of your interest.

If the market tanks, you lost the interest on your money and very little of if any of the principle. If Mr. Market keeps going up, you get a nice percentage of the gain designed at your comfort level with (almost) none of the risk.

Understanding the options jargon is less important than understanding this concept:

With your risk-free investment income, invest in the most speculative investments that have the potential to give you the highest returns. Even if you lose your entire investment, you will never go to the poor house because you will never lose principal.

Examples Of Speculative Investments

* DoneAt53 discusses buying out-of-the-money options that provide higher returns on a specific stock or index versus buying the actual stock or index. The downside is that if your options expire out of the money, they are worthless.

* Cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Litecoin are the hottest speculative investments at the moment and finally attracting mainstream capital. Bitcoin could easily collapse by 80% next week, but it could also continue to go up multiple times because of a surge in liquidity and world-wide adoption. You can by your slice of Bitcoin on an exchange like Coinbase.com.

* Internet and tech stocks in emerging markets. Buying the Googles, Facebooks, Ubers, Apples, of XYZ emerging markets is a straightforward investment thesis. Buying the next “Yahoo of China” was my investment thesis in 1999 when I bought VCSY. I continued this thought process in 2013 when I wrote, Should I Buy Chinese Stocks? Sina, Baidu, and RenRen have all done really well since.

* Angel investing where you provide seed stage capital is another way to earn massive returns. The problem with angel investing is that companies often have a minimum of $25,000 – $100,000. That’s unaffordable for most people, especially if you need to make $25,000- $100,000 in risk-free income. I’m no longer angel investing partly because of bad experiences. But if the minimums come down, I might do so again.

* The crappiest small cap IPO that has gotten bludgeoned since going public for whatever reason. One example is Blue Apron that IPOed at $10 and fell all the way down to $2.97/share. I decided to pick $10,400 worth up at $3.15 a share. They found a new CEO, lowered guidance, and fired a bunch of people since. The bar is low now and the stock shot up to $4.15 at one point. I hope they get bought out.

Another example is Snapchat. It went IPO at $17, got foolishly hyped up to $27/share and then disappointed repeatedly in its quarterly results and fell to $12 a share. The problem with my SNAP purchase at $12.24 is that even at current levels, it’s still valued at $18 billion. It’s harder to move rapidly or get purchased for a large premium when the company is already huge.

The recent crap IPO I missed was Funko (FNKO), a maker of toys. They priced the stock at $12, gapped up to $19.93 and closed that week at $7, all before reporting results. Now the stock is up 40%. You’ve really got to pay attention if you want to capture such opportunities.

* Original works of art from unknown artists who you think have the potential to go mainstream. If they don’t go mainstream, at least you can enjoy the work.

Speculative Investing Framework Example

To provide clarity, I’ve created a Speculative Investing Framework. The person below has $650,000 of low-risk capital returning $28,000 a year, or 4.3%. He proceeds to invest $28,000 in various speculative investments with a potential return of -75% to +625%.

The example has several assumptions that should be noted: 1) the low risk income is not required for survival, 2) rental income may or may not be considered low risk, 3) the time frame for the potential returns is unknown or up to the investor to decide, and 4) to deploy such a strategy, you must save aggressively and stop spending like a knucklehead, and 5) it’s up to you to figure out what else beyond CDs and muni bonds are considered low risk and invest accordingly.

Even if this person loses his entire $28,000 of low risk income in speculative investments, he’ll be fine. The key is to not get carried away by cutting into principal, much like a gambler does when he pulls out his wallet or goes to the ATM machine for more cash.

It’s Hard To Get Rich Quickly Investing In An Index Fund

Although earning a 16%+ return on your S&P 500 index fund in 2017 is excellent, it’s a relatively slow way to earn a fortune since the stock market averages around 8% – 9% a year long term. After all, one of my motto’s is achieving financial freedom sooner, rather than later.

If you want to get rich quicker, it’s worth carving out 5% – 10% of your investable assets and/or reinvesting your risk-free income into speculative investments that complement your plain vanilla investments each year. Just make sure your risk capital is capital you can afford to lose, because you will lose quite often. Also make sure you have a comfortable cash buffer to provide for you and your family in case Armageddon strikes again.

Because I hate losing money, I decided to invest time in my 30s building a lifestyle business. I figured worst case, I’d become a better communicator and learn something about the online publishing world. I knew I would not regret putting in an extra effort while I still had the energy.

My problem now is that at age 40 I’ve hit an inflection point where time is much more valuable than money. The desire for more time is why I’m happily farming out my capital to people who want to spend their careers looking at investments. It’s the same reason why I’m highly amenable to hiring a property manager the next time my tenants give me hell.

If you are lucky enough to strike it rich with a speculative investment, do your best to turn the funny money into a real asset that generates stable cash flow. If not, use some or all of your lucky winnings to pay for a better life.

Barring a natural disaster, the $580,000 property I bought in 2003 with my VCSY money will still be there generating $4,000+/month in rent forever. And if not, maybe I’ll make it into the Financial Samurai office or have my parents or sister live in it for free one day.

Remember: You only need to get rich once! Turn your lucky break into a gift that keeps on giving.

Related: Investment Ideas At The Top Of The Market

Readers, how much of your capital do you allocate to highly speculative investments? Do you have any big wins? If so, how did you spend or reinvest the proceeds? Note: On 9/25/2017, a condo unit next to mine with a similar layout sold for $1,360,000.

The post How To Invest In Speculative Investments Like Bitcoin Without Losing Your Shirt appeared first on Financial Samurai.

from Finance https://www.financialsamurai.com/how-to-invest-in-speculative-investments-like-bitcoin-without-huge-losses/ via http://www.rssmix.com/

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ronaldmrashid · 7 years ago

Text

How To Invest In Speculative Investments Like Bitcoin Without Losing Your Shirt

The stock’s 6,000% move was ridiculous as everybody I knew on the Street started piling into the name. I eventually got out of the stock at around $156 a share, netting a cool $153,000.

If only there was a system I could follow that would give me the confidence to consistently swing for the fences without losing my shirt.

Investing In Speculative Investments Without Losing Everything

Here’s what DoneAt53 wrote to another reader who is worried about current market valuations:

Understanding the options jargon is less important than understanding this concept:

Examples Of Speculative Investments

* Original works of art from unknown artists who you think have the potential to go mainstream. If they don’t go mainstream, at least you can enjoy the work.

Speculative Investing Framework Example

It’s Hard To Get Rich Quickly Investing In An Index Fund

Remember: You only need to get rich once! Turn your lucky break into a gift that keeps on giving.

Related: Investment Ideas At The Top Of The Market

The post How To Invest In Speculative Investments Like Bitcoin Without Losing Your Shirt appeared first on Financial Samurai.

from https://www.financialsamurai.com/how-to-invest-in-speculative-investments-like-bitcoin-without-huge-losses/

#Financial Samurai

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muddweekly · 7 years ago

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SF --> Vancouver

I moved to Vancouver last November because of visa issues. It’s been… quite a journey, to say the least.

Before I realized I had to move to Vancouver, I knew almost nothing about Canada. It seemed almost the same as US, but with… maple leaves and hockey? I also knew nobody in Vancouver. Or Canada, for that matter.

The idea of moving to an unknown place where I knew nobody seemed daunting, but before I moved, I wasn’t too worried. Of course moving to a brand new place would come with its difficulties, I thought to myself. But hey, I’d made moves like this twice before. Once from Taiwan to Philly, and once from Philly to Texas. I’d totally be fine.

So I was a little stunned and confused as I spent the third consecutive day alone in my Vancouver apartment, feeling miserable.

I’m a very inert person by nature. When left to my own devices, I tend to optimize my “activities” so I would be required to move as little as possible. If I were feeling thirsty, I would wait until I had to pee so I only needed to make one trip out of my bed. When I got hungry, I would opt to take a nap instead of getting something to eat.

I knew my laziness was a weakness of mine, but I never felt compelled to do anything about it. I’m lazy, so what? I’ve been surviving fine.

The further I went into my hermit life in Vancouver, the more I realized that the reason I survived fine was that there had always been social obligations that drew me away from my bed and back into a healthier life. School, work, a friend asking to grab lunch. In Vancouver, I didn’t even need to leave home for work, since I didn’t work with anyone in the Vancouver office.

I guess we often don’t realize how much we rely on certain things until we don’t have them anymore.

The freezing temperature didn’t help. I moved to Vancouver in November, and that winter apparently snowed the most in a very long time. Every time I went outside, I missed my warm bed.

I stubbornly clung onto my old lifestyle for a while. I had thought I didn’t need anything or anyone else, but I eventually had to admit that I needed external, physical interactions and stimuli to be happy. Getting my butt out of my bed at one point was pretty important, after all.

Thus began my quest of building a life in Vancouver. I joined a choir so I had a reason to get out of my apartment on the weekends. I started making it into the office even though many days I didn’t have to at all. I got comfortable eating out alone. I developed a crush on Justin Trudeau. I even made one friend!

I slowly abandoned the idea that I was stuck in Vancouver and started seeing my deportation as a chance to discover a new city. Before I moved, I never saw moving to Vancouver as that exciting. It won’t be that different from an American city, I thought to myself. It won’t be that interesting.

While it’s true that Canada is really similar to the US in many ways, I’ve come to enjoy discovering the subtle differences. A quick disclaimer, though: I’ve never been to another Canadian city, so I’m not always sure what is specific to Vancouver and what is Canadian in general.

Some interesting “Canadian” things I’ve observed/learned: Even the buses here say sorry when they’re not in service. Most people say “thank you” to the bus driver when they get off the bus. Poutine is sold at McDonald’s and the movie theater. Ice hockey is always playing on TV. Did you know there’s a hockey team named the Canadians?!

Around the time when Trump got elected, whenever Canadians hear that I had just moved from the US, they would ask, curiously, “how do you feel about the new president?” Moments like this reminded me that Canada is a different country, after all, with a different national identity. This sounds obvious, but Canadians just look, act, and sound so much like Americans that it’s easy to forget sometimes.

In terms of Vancouver as a city, one big thing that stood out to me was that there are a lot more clusters of international Asian people. Walking around the city, you see groups of Japanese people, Korean people, Chinese people, and Taiwanese people, all dressed in their country’s fashion and speaking their own language. San Francisco has its fair share of Asian people as well, but I feel like you see more Asian Americans in SF than the big groups of international or “fobby” Asian people that you see in Vancouver. Even the architecture in parts of Vancouver, like Robson street or the Richmond, reminds me of Asia. Like in Asia, there are a lot of tall apartment buildings each built in its own style.

All the Asian restaurants in Vancouver also tend to be more authentic. If you go to a Japanese restaurant, everyone there from the waitress to the chef behind the bar is Japanese, which is very different from the US, where most Japanese restaurants are not run by Japanese people. At Taiwanese restaurants, most of the times I hear familiar Taiwanese accents from the waitresses too! I sometimes think these Asian people just brought parts of Asia with them to Canada so they can still keep what they liked in Asia while enjoying the comfort and spaciousness of North America.

I also feel like Vancouver has more visible European influence than other U.S. cities, too, although it’s hard for me to pinpoint examples. Maybe it’s the European shops and restaurants? Or because of all the French in Canada? There is definitely a lot of European things in the US, too, but everything in the US feels more Americanized, whereas the cultures seem to be left more intact in Canada. All of this is to say that I guess I did find some truth in the stereotypes of Canadian cultural pluralism versus American “melting pot” assimilation.

One last thing I wanted to mention about Vancouver is I’ve really grown to appreciate the nature around Vancouver. I wish I were more into hiking and snowboarding to actually take advantage of it more, but I also love just admiring the mountains from afar… It’s quite a view at sunset!

I feel like I’m starting to ramble, so I’ll try to end this blog post soon… Unwillingly moving to a new city and a new country by myself was a lot harder than I’d expected, and I felt like I learned a lot about myself and about Canada through the process. Plus, now I get to add Vancouver to the list of cities I’ve lived in! It’ll be nice to move back to SF in a few months, but I’ll definitely miss the food and the clean air here.

Thanks, Vancouver. Despite the first few months of snow storms, you’ve treated me well :)

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roodiaries · 8 years ago

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Early 2017: Sydney Lights, Hints of the Pacific & Bum-Biting Goannas

The blog is back in AUSTRALIA (as per the theme and name, after the last entry's Asian deviation!) And it's more light-hearted and less moany than before I think :)

New Year in Sydney was an enticing prospect as popular opinion considers it to be one of the best places to celebrate. Clearly how good of a New Year you have depends totally on who you're with, what you do and what mood you're in, with the setting as simply something of a backdrop. That said, seeing in 2017 overlooking Sydney Harbour was one of the best new years I've experienced. The most overhyped night of the year lived up to its billing, one of the few times in my life it's done so (though the last four – in Edinburgh, Montanita, Birmingham & London respectively – have all been good ones).

The return from my December Asia trip was marked by a nasty bout of 7/11-sandwich food poisoning which saw me spew my guts and bile out in a hostel bathroom and cling to the toilet bowl for dear life. I was later told off for coughing too much in bed by a scary middle-aged African lady (from Sierra Leone), forcing me to put my pillow at the other end of the mattress. “Just go to sleep!”, I angrily retorted. She kept making comments aloud to herself in this dorm full of relaxed European male backpackers: “there's too much coughing in this room!...what time is it?...why does everybody hang their washing in here?” It's funny now, but at the time was very jarring. I spoke to her more the next day and she actually seemed quite nice: she just definitely shouldn't have been staying in a dorm room.

New Year came around and a big group of us headed down to village-like Balmain in the midsummer heat, weaving through the rampant picnicking masses ready to eat up the picturesque firework display, many/most with illicit alcoholic beverages tucked away to avoid clashes with the patrolling police. In my opinion, Australia is the most strict country I have ever been to in terms of rules and actual dishing out of fines for minor public disturbances (Singapore included): jay-walking in the city centre can get you a $70 on-the-spot fine; putting your feet on the seat on the train in Melbourne is $233 ($78 for children); not filling out the Census is $180 per day until you do. And alcohol is very carefully controlled: one wild backpacker party on Coogee Beach over Christmas led to the total alcohol ban in the area, which will probably be permanent now. Getting your hands on a beer at a festival or public event can be tricky too, and there were lots of signs up warning against it for New Year. Of course people still drank, but greater efforts were made not to get too rowdy and attract attention (efforts which failed increasingly as the day wore on), so that the family-friendly atmosphere could be maintained. I agree that a family-friendly atmosphere should be preserved for the public good, but the vast majority of people can and do drink responsibly so just leave us alone and let us booze at big events!

We were perched on the grass in a park on the south side of Sydney's twisty harbour (seriously, look at a map: I've never seen a port/harbour with so many coves, bays, inlets, promontories, peninsulas and creeks – it's mesmerising). I brought my friends from the farm days in Renmark to meet my uni chum Mark and his friends, and even bumped into my old colleague Sebastian from when we door-knocked together in Melbourne 9 months previously. It was a good group and a great firework display, with excellent views of the bridge, but a long arduous walk/bus journey home through the packed city.

On New Year's Day, I returned to stay with Adele and her family, also with Sara and her family, for a very homely get-together in Jervis Bay, involving feasts, soft beds, crab-infested mangrove walks and cute boat trips up creeks and bays. I then flew to Brisbane for another little getaway, deciding I had spent about $1000 less than I had anticipated in India & Nepal and so could afford more travelling before the dread-inducing job hunt began again. My long and short-term future seemed very uncertain at this point (long-term future still hasn't been sorted out, and probably never will). I was able to relax nonetheless, and immediately warmed to Queensland's capital and largest city. It seemed more spacious with wider streets and lower-rise buildings, like Adelaide but with greater charm, while also being friendlier and slower-paced than Sydney. It certainly felt like the Sunshine State on first impressions. Adele and I walked the Brisbane River with its summery Southbank swimming pools providing family fun and adding to the holiday atmosphere. The GOMA (Gallery of Modern Art) had some pretty cutting-edge exhibits, like a 22m-long Tongan mat, a scarily realistic large pensive woman in bed and a giant arch of cardboard boxes one inside the other getting progressively smaller, while West End was a cool neighbourhood with a more international and backpacker vibe (I spent a couple of nights here later). Mount Coot-tha provided a panoramic view of the city from the west; there were also some nice walking tracks and Turrbal aboriginal art designs in the surrounding forests.

Aboriginal Australia, away from well-worn narratives of horrors at the hands of European settlers in the past 230 years, is a mysterious, diverse and fascinating culture to explore. Or more correctly, cultures, since there were more distinct Aboriginal 'nations', speaking over 300 languages, on the continent when the First Fleet arrived in 1788 than there are countries in the world today. Only around 3% of the population of modern-day Australia is considered indigenous (Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders), and there are only token remnants of Aboriginal culture in the main cities: an occasional sign-post, some hiking tracks, information boards. Here are some of the oldest continuous human cultures in the world, believed to be at least 60,000 years old, and discovering more about them is definitely a high priority during my time here.

Talking of culture, we paid a visit to the Castlemaine-Perkins (XXXX) Brewery, my third brewery tour in Australia! XXXX isn't my favourite of the extensive Aussie beer selection but a classic one nonetheless and well advertised (“well you wouldn't want a warm beer!”) Just on the beer note, Australia does have a surprisingly good and extensive collection of beers, especially pale ales. My favourites are Little Creatures, James Squire 50 Lashes, Kosciuszko and Lazy Yak. Try them some time (they have some in bars in the UK too, e.g. Sheffield Tap).

In the following days, I had the chance to catch up with a few friends from my previous travels, such as Hanna, who I worked with as strawberry-pickers in the Huon Valley; and Gaby from the Loja period; as well as Alex Dodd, also from Loja days: we had a barbecue in his apartment and travelled with a few others down to Burleigh Heads on the Gold Coast. Though not able to match their high level of several-dozen kick-ups in casual beach footie, it was an amazing spot to jump in the waves and watch the professional surfing.

By the time I was leaving Brisbane, I'd decided to make my way back to Sydney by land for a sort-of-roadtrip before completing my plan of finding a job in Sydney and saving up. I hitched a ride down from Brissie to Byron Bay with a cool Kiwi surfer called Bertus I'd found on one of the Facebook backpacker groups. I actually had nowhere booked for Byron, and began to stress about it as we drew nearer and I saw how packed it was. 'I'll just sleep on the beach', I'd told myself before... But the reality of that is harder and more unpredictable than it seems, unless you're a more confident, battle-hardened outdoorsy adventurer than I currently am. I was warned of druggies, drunk backpackers, cold, animals and police, and suddenly became really desperate for a hostel bed. I traipsed from one to another, even trying the most garish and unashamedly wacky & backpackery of backpacker hostels, but there was no room at the inn. Finally I did discover one very new whitewashed and spacious refuge called Byron Bay Beach Hostel, where the manager even gave me a random discount (still $45, the most I've paid for a hostel in Oz). In spite of my immense relief, the extremely hot/badly ventilated rooms and the incredible rudeness of a giant group of French-speakers in not making any effort to speak to me when I joined them outside, marred the evening considerably. To those who haven't travelled in Australia or seen The Inbetweeners 2, Byron Bay is the most popular and bigged-up traveller resort in the whole country: famed for its chilled-out hippie vibes, artisan soul, party culture and great beaches, it's a must-see for anyone travelling the east coast. Unfortunately, I simply wasn't in the mood. However, the coastal hike up to the lighthouse (via Cape Byron, the most easterly point in mainland Australia) was excellent. The guided tour of the lighthouse itself was bizarrely run by a group of charming Americans in their 60s/70s!

I'd felt the need for a dose of a quieter life as a tonic to hectic east coast life, so I spent one week at a homestay found on the HelpX website. It was in a lush green corner of north-eastern New South Wales, near the town of Casino, at the farmstead of a couple called Sue & Keith. I met another English guy there named Cameron (from Swindon), who was studying in Melbourne, and enjoyed having a companion to share the adventures here with. Most activities were dictated by the incredible heat at the time, reaching 40 degrees but with suffocatingly high humidity levels. The shed-building work usually lasted only 45 minutes before we were all simply too hot to continue, and I can honestly not remember any time where I was sweating more than for this week, especially at dinner time when we'd just returned from a trip up to the 'internet cafe' hill (the only place nearby with phone signal) and sat down over hot food, delicious as it always was. Perspiration dripped from shirtless chests like rain during a monsoon, and I required multiples showers and 20-minute sessions sitting directly in front of the fan to remain un-cooked. Dinner time was also when normally-quiet Keith would unleash his strong views on many topics, from travelling to the state of the local government: he had particularly strong political views of a surprisingly bitter and right-leaning perspective for a man who had travelled so extensively, seeing Trump as the man to lead the free world and holding contempt for Obama, describing Zimbabwean dictator Robert Mugabe as a “mild version of Obama.” Fox News was seldom not on in the background with Bill O'Reilly and his “no-spin zone” an evening routine, more amusing than offensive for Cam and me.

We helped feed the myriad chickens, hens, ducks, geese, rabbits and guinea-pigs scattered in the junk-maze front yard. The amount of random stuff/junk surrounding the house was incredible. One day we were called upon to kill a sharp-clawed goanna (Aussie monitor lizard) that was caught biting the bum of a duck. That was a pain in the arse for everyone involved. It hid up a tree and refused to come down to face us. One day involved a funny 6hr roundtrip to the Gold Coast to pick up a spa and a water tank, which we were very worried about flying off, and spent a long time securing them on the back of the ute with ropes. We also had the opportunity to meet some of the long-term lodgers at the farm, some of whom were on drugs rehab and benefits. It was a good place to come to get away from it all (for them and me), and a different perspective on Australia to what I've normally been exposed to, meeting people at a different end of the spectrum to the city kids, high-flyers and international traveller circles.

Cam and I left the farm and headed down to Coffs Harbour on the train. Coffs has the unique privilege of being located at the point where the Great Dividing Range (Australia's only real mountain range) meets the Pacific Ocean to form a beautiful backdrop, topped off with a literally huge banana, a jumpable pier and picturesque harbour. We met a German guy called Jonas and two English girls (Becky and Helen) at the YHA, and together cycled around the surprisingly large coastal town, enduring some intimidating hills and a roaring motorway, but stopping for a dip to get hammered by the powerful waves, and then drinking goon (crap, boxed wine) at the hostel over cards.

The last stop on the Unexpected East Coast Adventure was the inland small-city of Tamworth, known throughout Australia as the nation's capital of all things country music and equestrian: “an antipodean Nashville,” as the guidebook described it. It was the busiest period of the year, as the annual Country Music Festival was beginning the day we arrived, and the streets were alive with the sound of (country) music: a few genuine cowboy and hillbilly types among the masses of pretend ones, dominated by middle-aged holidaymakers and committed locals letting loose with their families. We barbecued in the nature reserve beneath a baking hot sun with my friend Rose from other Aussie adventures, and went to see some lively performances (especially one band called Lonesome Train, led by an electric and skinny ladies'-man singer who seemed 20 years younger than he actually was). The festival was a lot of fun, and we met a few interesting characters. One was one of the aforementioned middle-aged Aussie let-loosers, whose kid stole my stool when I went to the bar; half-an-hour after what I thought had been a light-hearted altercation, (while he'd been sitting next to me the whole time watching the singers on stage) he casually said: “sorry about that before... but if it was 20 years ago, I would have smacked you in the mouth.” He then proceeded to drunkenly chat semi-aggressively, telling me anecdotes about a barman from Essex: “black as the ace of spades he was. Absolute tosser...” Something told me this guy was the real tosser! Another memorable night was when Cam and I got roped into a night-out with a bunch of 19 year-old locals shouting at the back of the bus (the kind of people you dread talking to you) and had to toss our bags into a bush on the way while holding the bus because otherwise we'd have to wait half an hour. It turned out to be a fun night out in this sparky little city.

I was worried but motivated upon my return to Sydney to stop spending and start saving. Putting a cashed-up bogan to shame, I'd spent a lot and was now in the hibernation, total-survival mentality where I write down exactly what I spend – including money given to homeless people – and rule my finances with an iron fist. It had been worth it, however, for this opportunity to finally explore some of the places most-discussed in backpacker circles and experience part of the Aussie east coast. Though a fun adventure, I didn't feel the east coast lived up to the hype, lacking a certain cutting edge or unpredictability. The best thing about it is the sheer ocean-beach-coastline scenery, which was boundless and inspiring, as well as the people I'd met (sorry for the cliché). I met some shit ones, too, though ;)

Back to the future: I found a job and I will talk about a more settled life in Sydney in the next blog entry, and perhaps more about Australia as a country, too.

Thanks a lot for reading! Scroll down for photos and the previous four articles.

Oliver

#Australia2017 #LongestTimeAway #EastCoast #ByronBay #Brisbane #CoffsHarbour #Tamworth #Casino #BlackAsTheAceOfSpades #MildVersionOfObama #KillThatGoanna

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