Photography – Page 8 – MikeHawkey.com

Work necessitated my travel south from Auckland to Hamilton City today. With a bit of a sore back, I took a few mini stops in the ~150km journey. What has since turned into a wet and forecast windy evening, was a beautiful golden morning.

I was shooting with a borrowed, semi broken Samsung NX10. The main LCD has cracked and does not function, but the ovf still works. Linked with my old Ricoh 50mm lens, it looks like a really nice kit – I only wish the ovf was a little larger, or offered some form of manual lens assistance like my Nex does. Still, some ok images from an otherwise potentially binned mirrorless camera.

Old archive shot for today

So our time had come to an end. The Holiday was over. As mentioned yesterday, we got up before the crack of dawn and began our journey home. After the initial travels, we found ourselves on a plane to Thailand. I followed with interest as the plane made a 360 turn in the middle of the ocean, and then later was notified as we went further North to wait for our landing opening (they never mentioned the full circle!?)

With time to kill (3-4 hours) I endlessly wandered Bangkok airport. As far as airports go, its a pretty nice one. Stretching for seemingly miles, outside is decorated with various giant model/display areas. The architecture reminds me of the framing I made in old balsa planes (all skeleton like).

And then we were in the air. Our last Thailand Sunset. We’d been up for around 14-15 hours at this point. Being I dont sleep on planes, and we had ~12 hours to go in the air (and a stop at Australia yet), I prepared for a long day.

Landing back in Auckland, New Zealand was both a nice feeling, and a bump back to reality. I’d been awake about a day and a half, most of the time spent sitting in a plane, followed by sitting in a van, followed by sitting in airports. It took a few days to actually ‘land’. Here we are landing in NZ…The photo actually makes me look better than I felt!

And thats Thailand!

Ive got a few novelty pictures yet to post, but the travel novel’s over.

Catch you tomorrow.

Our last day in Thailand was a long one. I forget exactly, but wakeup was something like 4.30 am to begin our escort from Ko Lanta to Phuket (and then from there to Bangkok to Australia to New Zealand). Our driver was a great host and put on some mostly English western music. The one issue being, it was a 3 hour van ride, and the music was no more than 40min long per repeat. Crossing over on a car ferry off Lanta we watched a glistening sunrise as our time away took its final leg.

Up in the plane it was a fairly clear day. I didnt have the window seat, and my 28mm lens is less than idea for capturing the awesome view down below, but I still captured a few images I am happy with:

As with all holidays, they come to an end. I’ve got a few selections left to share over the coming days, bit as I look over my holiday snaps, the bottom of the pile is looming.

Not one for just sitting and basking in the sun, I went for numerous walking outings whilst we stayed at Ko Lanta. Here are some shots from the second to last day we stayed on the island.

“No Parking On Uneven Days” – surely that causes confusion at times?

Just a series of random shots from various walkabouts on Ko Lanta.

In Ko Lanta, you have the choice of petrol from your general gas station (as above), or…

By the bottle is slightly cheaper! (and you get a bottle!!!)

There is also a local movement to stop the development of a coal power plant back in Krabi – places like Koh Lanta and their marine reserves in the transporting way. Its a tough one for a country both so dependent on tourism, but equally, with massive power demands (and outages). Unfortunately, we all say ‘not in my backyard’…but who’s, or what alternatives?

A few facebook links regarding the protest:

https://www.facebook.com/NoCoalLanta
https://www.facebook.com/SayNoToKrabiCoalPowerPlant

After a ~2 hour boat trip we landed in the sunny (really really hot) Ko Lanta. Spending the rest of the day at the hotel area, it was like its own little village (much larger than our other temporary homes). An interesting observation (perhaps) also that it was the most English-western of all stops in Thailand based on both things like the music at the resort, and the general accent of the tourist staying there.