Thailand, Chiang Rai or how I just wanted to get away from this place

Chiang Mai was awesome, I really liked it there. It had a good vibe, it was not too big, not too small, a nice town to stay for a couple of days. However, I wanted to see something else in my month in Thailand. So I decided to stay a little in Chiang Rai, way up north of Thailand. From friends I heard a lot of good things about it and I was really excited to go to some nice viewpoints. This, however, did not happen. I could not get to the best place to be: Phu Chi Fa. For getting there I needed to drive four hours on a dangerous road, which I could not handle. That’s what the people told me. Just google the place, it seemed like the best viewpoint in the whole of Thailand. Bummer.

Arriving at Chiang Rai was also not that great. It felt like a too small place with a bad vibe. I do not know why, but I immediately had a bad feeling about it.

This is why I did not do sooo much in Chiang Rai. I stayed there for two nights and that was it. In this time I still did a little: The White Temple, The Black House and the Long Neck Tribe. These are some impressions of it. I hope you like them! Feel free to connect via Facebook, Twitter or Instagram! 🙂

 

 

Thailand, Chiang Mai

Chiang Mai, one of the cities I spend the most time in. First there was the overnight train from Ayutthaya and then a lot of temples. At one of the temples, the Doi Suthep, there were some kids wearing traditional clothes. This was of course a nice motive. The Problem however is that they were there for a reason: Tourism. The always wanted money in exchange for a photo. It is sad to see them only standing there and smiling only for that reason. I did take a shot without knowing this, but it’s just not genuine. I did not like it as much. I will just show another shot I took, where they were chilling on the steps to the temple. I felt this was more interesting than a fake smile.

In Chiang Mai I strolled around a lot and found a great hotel, where you had to go through a nice hallway with pictures on the walls. It was a bit curved, which build nice lines. Another nice place was the Wat Chedi Luang, which was one of the most beautiful temples I’ve seen in Thailand. There were also monks who sang a song and hummed. It was really great to experience this.

I hope you like the photos! Feel free to contact me via Twitter or visit my facebook page 🙂

 

Thailand ’15

My first big trip. Alone. I needed almost one month to finally muster up the courage to click on that „booking“ button for the flight to Thailand. I am glad that I did it eventually. First I wanted to go away for about three months, then I decided to be away for one month, at the end I should have booked for a longer time. It is always like that, the travel bug gets’ya. Still, I enjoyed the month in Thailand, although there were some hickups. I want to go back to asia in the future that’s for sure.

My trip involved these locations in chronological order: Bangkok – Ayutthaya – Chiang Mai – Chiang Rai – back to Chiang Mai – Pai – Krabi – Koh Phi Phi – Koh Lanta – Krabi – Bangkok

Because this is my photography blog I only want to get into the photography side of my journey. I shot almost 3000 photos, the iPhone ones included. Most of the time I just wanted to remember stuff, locations etc. just for me, so these will never get to the public. There won’t be so many photos which are artistically worth mentioning. I just took my time with my back-series (click here for that). The other ones are just for pure documentation.

At first I did not have the courage to take every photograph I want, because I didn’t want to harass the people. With time I got a better feeling for Thailand and therefore got more out of myself and even asked people to stand for me in front of a background. I still don’t like the feeling of taking photos of different cultures. Somehow it feels like they are some kind of zoo animal and the visitor takes photos of them, because they are so different. To make it worse, they want to get photographed, because then they get money or more leverage to get more money out of it. I mean, these were the people who dressed up exactly for that reason or live off off the tourism business. The „real“ thai people I asked did not want a picture of them taken, so I let it be. At the end I just wanted to capture the atmosphere of the places I’ve been, not forgetting to make it interesting somehow of course.

I think I have to split up the photos into parts, because it’s easier to pinpoint where everything was. The first photos are from my flights, my hostel, Wat Pho and the streets I walked around in Bangkok.

Feel free to comment and connect 🙂