Bangkok, Three Days

A stopover spent almost entirely looking up.

November 2011

The city and its waterways seen from a plane window just after take-off, wing across the frame

A small white and gold shrine set back in dense palms, seated Buddha inside

Four bronze bells hung on a rail against a whitewashed wall, small bells strung above them

A temple hall lit from a doorway behind the standing gold Buddha, murals over every wall

The city gets going long before anyone means to. Out of the temple grounds and straight into traffic, then a market, then a boat.

A street corner with a mirrored office block on one side and a tuk-tuk crossing the junction

A man carrying a crate through a covered market, blurred as he passes the camera

A boatman sitting at the stern of a long boat moored against a sandbagged canal wall

A visitor standing in front of a painted mural of a walled palace complex

Two giant guardian figures flanking the open doorway of a temple pavilion

A tiled gateway with a gold kinnara standing either side of the steps

A man in a white uniform and sun hat cleaning the marble base of a shrine

Looking straight up the side of a gold chedi to its spire against flat blue sky

Close on mirrored glass mosaic and gilded flame ornaments on a temple base

The stone scale model of Angkor Wat, temple roofs rising behind it

Gilded spires and a golden chedi crowded together against a pale sky

A row of mosaic demon figures holding up the gold base of a chedi

The face of a gold kinnara statue in full sun, temple roofs behind

A Chinese stone guardian with a long beard and a halberd, standing under a tree

A brown river winding through haze far below the wing, sky deepening above