Bougainvillea, Chinatown gate
This is the sign in front of the Bangkok City Hall, with Bangkok’s full name on it ….so long it needs a fisheye lens to fit it all in !
กรุงเทพมหานคร อมรรัตนโกสินทร์ มหินทรายุธยา มหาดิลกภพ นพรัตนราชธานีบูรีรมย์ อุดมราชนิเวศน์มหาสถาน อมรพิมานอวตารสถิต สักกะทัตติยวิษณุกรรมประสิทธิ์
or transliterated :
Krungthepmahanakhon Amonrattanakosin Mahintharayutthaya Mahadilokphop Noppharatratchathaniburirom Udomratchaniwetmahasathan Amonphimanawatansathit Sakkathattiyawitsanukamprasit
Which, according to wikipedia, translates as:
City of angels, great city of immortals, magnificent city of the nine gems, seat of the king, city of royal palaces, home of gods incarnate, erected by Vishvakarman at Indra’s behest.
Wikipedia also says it is the longest city name in the world …thank goodness that “Bangkok” will do instead !
I actually went over there to get some timelapse photos for a project I have been working on, I was planning on getting a sequence with the “Giant Swing” and the temple you can just see poking up above the sign but there were ugly tour buses parked right in the middle of the shot 
And the interesting clouds of earlier in the day had all blown over by the time I got there
Mai pen rai …….or, never mind, there is always another day and other places.
Some more photos from Nepal, this time from Kathmandhu :
Table tennis, Kathmandhu 1994 style !
On my first full day of my very first overseas trip I went on a tour of some of the city sights, including Pashupatinath Temple which is a very sacred Hindu temple dating back to the 5th century (apparently Pashupatinath was one of the few historic sites to come out of the recent tragedy virtually undamaged).
Pashupatinath temple, Nepal
Non-Hindus can only look from across the other side of the river, which was quite close enough for me once I realised that the fires were funeral pyres and there were bodies wrapped up in the cloth. No Mike, you are not at home now ! Yes, I had a fair dose of culture shock on that first trip ! It takes a lot more to make me feel queasy nowadays.
Also at Pashupatinath was this snakecharmer, making what I know now to be a more than decent income from gullible tourists like me. “Photo,photo, just five dollar”.
Snake charmer, Katmandhu, Nepal
This was originally a colour slide, but I have converted it to monochrome in Photoshop as the original colours were rather blue-ish.
I was to go back to Nepal twice more, in 1995 and 1999, so I guess that I must have got over the culture shock ? In fact I have been to some part of Asia at least once a year since 1988. This is perhaps going to sound rather callous, but in 1995 I went to India for about 5 months after Nepal, and I didn’t bat an eyelid when a man died in front of me while waiting at a railway station, and people just started taking his sandals, his walking stick, etc. After a few months backpacking in India nothing much would shock most people. Life is cheap, death is commonplace.
After 5 months in India I was glad to get out of there and head to Thailand for the first time, back in 1995 India was a fascinating but equally frustrating country ….endless train and bus rides, scammers after your money, “Delhi Belly”, cricket games on the streets of Calcutta slums, incredibly cheap accommodation, equally incredible palaces, a non stop assault on all your senses by good and evil. But I have to say that I have been considering a return trip for a while …but not for 5 months again ! But then again, I have n’t been to Vietnam yet …….and I may have a trip to Malaysia coming later this year …
OK, maybe not such a goodie ! Do you think that I overused the polarising filter ? 
I was doing a bit of cleaning out on my hard drive this morning when I came across a long forgotten folder full of scanned slides, taken in ancient pre-digital times. Looking at some of them I wonder why I kept the original, let alone went to the trouble of scanning them. They were mostly from my first overseas trips, so some of them did have sentimental value and bring back memories but some had no sentimental, artistic or technical values !
Some were quickly deleted, but some I have tweaked a bit in Lightroom and Photoshop and hopefully improved slightly. Here are just a few from my first trip to Nepal, way back in 1994. From memory I was using a Minolta X700 then, usually loaded with Kodachrome.(for Gen Youtube readers, that is not just the title of a Paul Simon song ….ok, I can hear you say “who’s Paul Simon? )
Thangboche Monastery, Nepal
Although sometimes I played around with Black and White film …..
Fancy that, you had to commit to taking a whole roll of 24 black and white photos before you could switch back to colour !
Yes, I overdid the polariser again !
This was taken from just above Namche Bazaar, looking towards Thangboche Monastery just visible on a ridge in centre of photo, with Ama Dablam on the right and Mt Everest peeking over the top, centre left. The second of the biggest recent earthquakes in Nepal had it’s epicentre just near here, so I cannot help wondering what it is like there now.
I think my photography has improved enough since then not to overuse a polarising filter so much !
One of photography’s inevitabilities is that if you own a DSLR you will end up with dirt on the sensor sooner or later. Most modern cameras have some sort of dust removal option in their menu, which works ….. sort of, as it just shakes the specks of dust off the sensor, to settle somewhere else inside your pride and joy for a while until it migrates back to the sensor again. But if you have “wet” dirt spots on your sensor, from moisture, salt spray from changing lens at the beach, oil drops from the shutter mechanism (as D600 owners would know!) then it’s not so easy.
Yuk !
If you are lucky you might be able to ignore one or two spots in the corner, hiding them in the foreground of your picture, but when you get dark spots all over the sky and get tired of cloning them out in Photoshop you know you have to do something about it.
You could go the DIY route and clean the sensor yourself, there are plenty of articles on the web preaching how easy it is, and also as many stories of what could go wrong.
You could send it off to the professionals to do the job, which is what I did last time my D7000 needed some TLC. Nikon Australia charged me $99 and took a week to do it. I have n’t used the D7000 for a long time, since I upgraded to a D800. I also have n’t used my fisheye lens for a long time so the other day I got them both out, only to find spots all over the sensor 
Probably a legacy of my Outback marathon drive around Australia.
Googling “sensor cleaning Bangkok” came up with an article by Kevin Revolinski at “The Mad Traveler” recommending AV Camera over near Saphan Taksin BTS station. The latest price quoted of 300 baht (approx AU$11/US$9) seemed ridiculously cheap for quality service, but when I went in there yesterday I was standing behind a pro photographer with 2 Nikon D4s, and judging by the way he and the manager joked he seemed like a regular client. If they are good enough for him they should be ok for me !
They tell me to come back in 45 minutes, but I give them an hour before returning to find a camera that looked almost as new, inside and out. Not a spot to be seen on the sensor, and all the exterior cleaned too, for 300 baht.
So if anybody ever needs a sensor cleaning in Bangkok I certainly recommend AV Camera over near the Robinsons store on Charoen Krung road.
AV Camera, from ferry and BTS
From the BTS station, or the Sathorn/Central ferry pier if coming from KSR perhaps, walk to Charoen Krung road, turn left and left again just before Robinson’s at the “Bangrak Bazaar” soi 50, AV Camera is on the left side about 15 metres from the main road. They also sell all sorts of photo gear and accessories so might be worth checking out if you are in the market for a new toy 
I believe AV Camera is a franchise chain as there are other stores with the same name. I don’t know anything about the other shops, either good or bad.
Just a test shot on the way home… not a speck of dust.
And just a test shot on the way home ..not a speck of dust to be seen.
Just some more photos from my Phi Phi trip the other week: 
It is the start of the rainy season now, so we did get a bit of rain but it only came at night so that was not too much of an inconvenience …except for the last night when the roof over my room started leaking onto the bed ! The management did n’t seem too worried about either, so if you ever stay at Coco’s Guesthouse on Phi Phi during the rainy season don’t get room C7 ! Once again I took a GoPro Hero 4 and a Nikon 1 AW1 in round 3 of GoPro vs Nikon, after my trips to Phi Phi last year and to the Similans in February. Most of these photos are from the Nikon.
Click to see my photos at Pbase.
Click to see my Youtube videos
Designing and building an Eco House in Thailand
Follow the Blonde Coyote and see more of the world!
Trying to live a creative life
a camping trip of ridiculous proportions
Changes in latitude, changes in attitude 