Now that the holidays are over I’ve been catching up with my on-line reading, visiting some of the sites I always enjoy but don’t have enough time to drop by daily. Ilbonito’s blog is one of those. He’s been visiting Thailand again and has a great collection of posts covering Bangkok and Chiang Mai. Part of why I enjoy his blog so much is the photography. He tends to take the type of photos that I do. That he has posted an exemplary Ubiquitous Plastic Stool Shot! proves that.
Most of his posts are visual; text, if there is any, is sparse. His most recent round of Thailand-related posts, however, include several in which he provides a great commentary on the area he visited as well as on places well-known to most of us. And the bastard is as talented at writing as he is with his photography. I’m thinking of just posting links to his posts every day instead of bothering to write stuff myself. His post on Sukhumvit is one of the best descriptive pieces I’ve ever run across. I think I hate him. And once you get a load of his hottie husband, you’ll hate him too. No one is supposed to have that much talent and that much hotness in his life. I should report him to the gods.
But instead I’m going to order his book, Bangkok Off The Grid. If it contains even a quarter of the information he posts on his blog it’s a steal. A (mainly) gay bar that opens up in one of the storefronts at the Weekend Market at night? Sweet! And I never heard of it before. He also makes mention of one of my favorite blues bars in Bangkok . . . I’m willing to forgive him for the hot husband knowing he’s a fellow fan of the blues.
I’m beginning to sense a familiar theme to Ilbonito’s photography . . .
I still enjoy visiting Wat Pho; I’ve been to the Grand Palace more times than necessary (but have to admit it is impressive and worth visiting more than once), by now I’m looking for something different to occupy my time when I’m in Bangkok. A zoo on top of a department store? A temple on the 35th floor of a skyscraper? Sign me up. Subtitled ‘The kitsch, the cool and the bizarre – a guide to the secret sides of the world’s weirdest city,’ his guidebook has an edgy look to it that matches its promised content. You can’t help but be drawn to the large, bold, jarring text: bludgeoned to death with a dildo. And while he tells you where to go and what to see – complete with instructions in Thai for your taxi driver – he also includes stories and interviews that raise his book above the typical offering of the guidebook genre. You can check out a 10 page preview from the publisher’s website. And catch yet another Ubiquitous Plastic Stool Shot! too.
Not that you have to shell out a few bucks for his book. His blog too provides lots of good tips about some of his more unusual finds in Thailand. I’ve already made a note that I need to check out Wat Ket Karam in Chiang Mai – the temple has a collection of photographs of old time executions in Chiang Mai’s city square. And a termite carved piece of wood replicating Van Gogh’s ‘Sunflowers’ . . . how cool is that! You can easily spend hours just perusing his posts on Chiang Mai alone. Which, having just discovered he has written about his trip to Burma too, I’m about to do . . .
If you haven’t check out his blog yet, do yourself a favor and use one of the links in this post, or the link to his home page in my blog roll below. You can thank me later.
The Ubiquitous Plastic Stool in this shot is a bonus, the scene screams Bangkok and makes me want to go jump on a plane right now.
Related Posts You Might Enjoy:
Going Down At Bangkok’s Baiyoke Sky Tower
Ubiquitous Plastic Stool Shot! #10
Your Heart’s Desire