Jungle Foilage in the Heart of Bangkok, A Sprite ad.

[boomer2]

I was walking over a small arched stone bridge on a street in Bangkok for a walk.  A bridge about 1 half of a block long which arched up about 35 feet over a green jungle shanty-shack residential area where on each end of the bridge are tall buildings of 4 to 16 floors in height and next to one another.  I had gotten off the bus to photograph a block of jungle foliage and some floating shanty shacks aluminum roofs amidst swampy waters with Lilly pads, a foot bridge and in the background was a giant Sprite billboard advertisement.

As the billboard was so large and I was amazed that before this bridge and after this bridge was a sprawling metropolis of huge buildings and a city of concrete and steel, and as the bus sent up the small arched bridge, these are the two photos I took and then the combined photo after I place them both together on a piece of paper and glued the together with rubber cement to make a photo image of the panoramic view I was experiencing.

I had to get off the bus in the business district at a bus stop half a mile away and walk two blocks farther way to cross the street on an overhead pathway and then walk a  really long walk along a section of New Petchburi Road to get to the bridge to take the photo.

In Bangkok many streets run parallel for miles at a time before one can turn to go left or right tot he next parallel street over.  Many streets in the city are very long and  many run the distance of the entire length of the city.  And many are not always going in a single direction.  The streets turn, veer and often change direction in very uneven straight directions.  Many times, the next parallel street over is four or five blocks away to get to the next parrelel street.

In fact, the city streets of both Bangkok (largest city in Thailand) and Changmai (2nd largest city in Thailand) are built similar to that of a maze and blocks of the city fit the design like an interlocking puzzle and with no symmetry to the designs of the layouts of the streets shapes.  They are not straight or in vertical or horizontal directions.  A simple block can have 4 square sides or corners but the buildings in the block have no similar shapes.  They veer away from the symmetrical shape of a normal block so none are usually even

 I was photographing billboard signs, Giant Eagle metal sculptures on the top floors of the outside of tall bank buildings, a black pot kettle, and interesting and unusual images before I reached the bridge to shoot these images of the sprite sign and shanty-shacked dwellings built in swampy waters in the middle of the city.

1988. Arched Bridge on New Petchburi Road. Maybe4 km from Banlumphu (the European Hippie District (where Leonardo de Caprio stayed in a disgusting guest house room on Khosan Road).  Hundreds of 50 cents to $6.00 a night cheap suffocating heat and bug infested rooms for backpackers and trekkers, mostly of  European, Australian, Scandinavian, and Latino tourist inhabitating visitors.

The first two separate images of the scene.

[attachment=2:38kwl8vn]bangkoktrip3N4-26abc.jpg[/attachment:38kwl8vn]

The second image displays the view directly to the right of the first image.

[attachment=1:38kwl8vn]bangkoktrip3N4-27abc.jpg[/attachment:38kwl8vn]

Next, I placed the two images next to one another and glued them from the back of the two separate photographs to a piece of paper, thus making them into a single image of the scene.

[attachment=0:38kwl8vn]bangkoktrip3N4-27a-abc.jpg[/attachment:38kwl8vn]

A somewhat perfect match.

boomer2

[boomer2]

And now here, after a 12-hour cross country 380 km motorcycle road trip by myself on a Honda 100 Dream machine from Changmai to Sukothai, the last capital of Bangkok, with four pot stops along the highways, from Changmai to Sukothai, I finally at 7pm when the dark came, I reached my destination.

Sukhothai was the first capital of Thailand (Siam, at the time of the 8th century)/

Sukhothai translates into English as, "Dawn of Hapiness."  Avery beautiful ancient city of great architectural design.

These two photographs of two houseboats on the river looked cool to me and the farther one gets away from the larger cities (Bangkok and Changmai), the friendlier the people are to you, especially to the tourists who bring money to the village and the peoples of the country side.

Their interests stems from the fact that they are curious about someone who has traveled great distances from faraway foreign lands to their homes and often beckon you  to come into their homes and share their food with you.

In fact, these poor people are more than often willing to share with you the little that they have.  While people who are rich would not ever share anything with someone who has nothing to begin  with

These two photos were taken of a riverboat home on the Yom river.

The family who lived in this boat inviting me to come aboard and as I did, the foot bridge to the houseboat suck halfway into the water and I got completely soaked after slipping into the river.  So my clothes were hanging on the line while I was wearing a batik as cloth covering while my clothes dried in the hot sun and I enjoyed a meal of hot Pad Thai noodles and a cup of tea.

I had waved at the Thai man on the boat and had pointed to my watch and asked in gesture as to what time it was.

He then looked at me and called out, "oh you speak English.  Please come in my home and drink coffee with me to practice my English please."  Since I do not drink coffee I had tea and they fed me some food and candied rice noodle desert drink which looked like long green gummy bear types of worms in coconut milk.  very sweet and tasty.

Here are the two separate images of the boat.

[attachment=1:3bkpf39f]roadtochangmaitrip3N4-1.jpg[/attachment:3bkpf39f]

[attachment=0:3bkpf39f]roadtochangmaitrip3N4-2.jpg[/attachment:3bkpf39f]

Thus I suck on the plank to his home.

Darn!  Now I cannot find the image of the two photos next to one another as a single image.

Sorry.

I have also done this with six photographs of a 360 degree complete circle of photographs of a mountain range near Fang, Northern Thailand and made the 360 degrees look like a single mountain top panoramic view.  Unfortunately two wide to post.  But a single image of a 360 degree turn in six photos and then it looks like a long mountain range and kinda hard to see it as a complete circled view of the mountains in Fang.

boomer2

really sorry about the boat photo. Maybe a member here would like to take the two images oftrhe house boats and make them into a single image?