Bangkok | The Great Metropolis #TheViewFromHere #Bangkok #Photography #Writing

Never in the eyes of gods did I feel so small – then again, the eyes are always watching. #TheViewFromHere #Bangkok #Photography

It’s not meant to be comforting; inflections of power rarely are. #TheViewFromHere #Bangkok #Photography

Where life itself is packaged and commodified, are we to find some sort of respite in the grotesque? #TheViewFromHere #Bangkok #Photography

Bangkok is something of an absurd character in that sense: it’s the demon fish that I choose to write about. #TheViewFromHere #Bangkok #Photography

"You like it?” I shrugged and smiled and shovelled another spoonful of critters down my gob. #TheViewFromHere #Bangkok #Photography

Routine has the nasty habit of making the most spectacular of things a few shades less vibrant. #TheViewFromHere #Bangkok #Photography

"If I drink this, I’m going to get belligerent." When I was living in Mumbai, in a world so far away from the middle of Silom Plaza’s food court, a friend of mine would proudly declare his intentions before getting completely, utterly and absolutely shitfaced. #TheViewFromHere #Bangkok #Photography

The weighted spiritualism pasteurised by a fake gem necklace, the roots of this organic system, were as salient as its blossoms. #TheViewFromHere #Bangkok #Photography

I believe that to be the beauty in natural systems: the aesthetic of a willing unknowingness and a recognition that understanding is inherently reductive. I neither know nor want to know. #TheViewFromHere #Bangkok #Photography

Like a bouquet of plastic flowers perfumed with synthetic oils, centuries-old belief systems are neutered behind the window of a London-based spiritual wellness store. #TheViewFromHere #Bangkok #Photography

An energy drawn from the unknown laws governing how many flowers are appropriate to give to your first sweetheart - or what counts as a reasonable amount of bruising before it can no longer be sold. #TheViewFromHere #Bangkok #Photography

Pak Khlong Talat: a street of marigolds and orchids and roses, of pollen and perfumed syrup hanging in the air with smoke and dim sum steam. I was immediately enraptured. #TheViewFromHere #Bangkok #Photography

Bangkok | The City of Angels #TheViewFromHere #Bangkok #Writing

I simply cannot afford to be stabbed. #TheViewFromHere #Bangkok #Photography

He readjusts and sends a gentle pulse through the ink, and the light above his head moves with him. #TheViewFromHere #Bangkok #Photography

I feel neither lonely nor alone. #TheViewFromHere #Bangkok #Photography

I’ve landed in the arms of a single eyeball with eight feathered wings jetting out in irregular directions, but the feathers are also made of eyeballs, and it drops me in front of three demons, at least they look like demons but I am not sure. #TheViewFromHere #Bangkok #Photography

I speed up my pace and am now aware that I'm not actually floating; there is gold on either side and I don't know when it will end. #TheViewFromHere #Bangkok #Photography

I’d probably be more embarrassed than hurt if I got stabbed. #TheViewFromHere #Bangkok #Photography

Bangkok: The Seat of the King and the City of Royal Palaces #TheViewFromHere #Bangkok #Photography #Writing

Statues can only aesthetically indicate that they do not wish to be photographed. In this sense, they often make excellent subjects. #TheViewFromHere #Bangkok #Photography

Amidst my hunger, I still spent the better part of a giddy hour trying to identify characters from the Ramakien on the palace's murals - I still winced when the sun reflected off its iridescent gems. #TheViewFromHere #Bangkok #Photography

The King's ghost is nowhere to be found; the palace is empty. #TheViewFromHere #Bangkok #Photography

The Grand Palace crawls with my Rakshasa kin, and there are neither divine weapons nor armies of tawny monkeys in sight. The Yakshas are immobilised by their golden cloaks. Despair, for the king’s head sits atop a profitable golden platter. #TheViewFromHere #Bangkok #Photography

The new tiles and coats of paint, the renovations and underground corridors and metal gates may lend the ghosts occupying the Grand Palace a certain softspokenness, but with the right ear, perhaps one can still hear King Rama calling down from the heavens. #TheViewFromHere #Bangkok #Photography

You're met with a silence broken only by the noise of a flock of white collared workers wearing red dresses on a company-sponsored trip. #TheViewFromHere #Bangkok #Photography

Bangkok: Home of the Gods Incarnate #TheViewFromHere #Bangkok #Photography #Writing

Divinity can wait until I’m finished eating. #TheViewFromHere #Bangkok #Photography

As Yudhishthira regained his kingdom after his exile, Bangkok still carries whispers of righteous divinity. #TheViewFromHere #Bangkok #Photography

An ego death brought on not by large numbers of psychedelic mushrooms but by complete detachment from the illusory I #TheViewFromHere #Bangkok #Photography

One-hundred-thousand lines in, his quill snapped in two; Ganesha broke off one of his tusks to use as a pen, else the divine epic risked being lost forever. I sense he carries the same intellectual resilience. #TheViewFromHere #Bangkok #Photography

They are the rising and setting and midday sun, an eternal cycle governing all systems. #TheViewFromHere #Bangkok #Photography

It at once hums the aum of grandfather Brahma and hosts packs of headless demonic women: it is both the taste of red Fanta and the Noble Eightfold Path. #TheViewFromHere #Bangkok #Photography #Writing

When the centuries flow and the idols converse with each other, can the city yield to an unchanging soul? #TheViewFromHere #Bangkok #Photography

Kuala Lumpur: Durians and other Smelly Things #TheViewFromHere #KualaLumpur #Photography #Writing

Some very regular and not so smelly squid. #TheViewFromHere #KualaLumpur #Photography

A sickly sweet aroma and the glitz of one-hundred-thousand neon lights / a wrong turn down a rat-filled alleyway and the stench of rotting flesh. #TheViewFromHere #KualaLumpur #Photography

Discovery and a childlike sense of wonder / wondering why you wanted to be a part of it all in the first place. #TheViewFromHere #KualaLumpur #Photography

The very most smelliest game: humans. #TheViewFromHere #KualaLumpur #Photography

The grandiose of unfathomable mercantile wealth and a crown of thorns / a custard-like inner core and the unshakable sense that life here is, as it is almost everywhere, actually quite mundane. #TheViewFromHere #KualaLumpur #Photography

Kuala Lumpur: The City of Contrast mcolegrady.substack.com/p/kuala-lump... #TheViewFromHere #KualaLumpur #Photography #Writing

A city where mosques sit within the gaze of usurious bankers committing unspeakably haram acts and a vine-wrapped apartment sits between a Buddhist pagoda and a piss-yellow art deco facade. #TheViewFromHere #KualaLumpur #Photography

Nature at its very most curated: a public park in a posh financial district. #TheViewFromHere #KualaLumpur #Photography

I took a photo of an electric box because it’s not a person and is unable to ask why I’m pointing a camera at it. #TheViewFromHere #KualaLumpur #Photography

Somehow it all still feels like the city is smiling at me in the way that a barista smiles at someone on the tail end of a ten hour shift. #TheViewFromHere #KualaLumpur #Photography

Maybe the graffiti is in the utilitarian warnings pasted to lamp posts, caked in bird shit. #TheViewFromHere #KualaLumpur #Photography

"Do you sing?" I cocked my eyebrows and glanced at the microphone. "No, I don’t." Minutes later, we were stumbling through the lyrics of Sweet Child of Mine. #TheViewFromHere #KualaLumpur #Photography

A lone traveller may climb a set of rainbow coloured stairs and gaze up at a gilded statue’s pert ass. #TheViewFromHere #KualaLumpur #Photography

Ipul the Snake Man "The snake pulsed, with each contraction digging itself deeper into Ipul’s skin and flesh. He pulled the snake off of him, it helicoptered for a few moments more, and Ipul returned him to the bush." #travel #indonesia #writing #nature #snakes #adventure