I have lived, and driven, in this fine country for more than fifteen years. It is therefore inevitable that I have a few encounters with the boys in brown. Some have been as a result of actual transgressions (wrong way down a one-way street), some as the result of questionable transgressions (driving in the outside lane - I was overtaking, BiB said I wasn’t), and some as a result of outright scams (You were going more than 120kph - my truck doesn’t go that fast).

Occasionally, if I had been obstinate and dumb enough, I was waved on my way. But usually these encounters have been resolved by the passing of funds from me to the usually friendly police representative. In fact, once cash has changed hands, they become very friendly indeed.

For example, there is a road in Bangkok which inexplicably turns into a one-way coming towards you when you drive towards it, requiring you to turn off just before the one-way system into a tiny soi. Not at all obvious, and so the police managed the situation by installing a large sign saying “turn left” placing a police box just past the turn so they could arrest errant drivers in comfort. I was caught, and waved into a parking area where my crime was explained and 100 baht offered in recompense. This made the policeman very happy and he wanted to know where I was headed. He then explained the best route, which involved cutting across four lanes of traffic; and then jumped into the road, stopped all four lanes and sent me on my way with a smart salute. Best 100 baht service ever.

I have a policy to never pay more than 200 baht, and this has been sufficient to ensure that I have never actually been served a ticket from the little pad of paper that they all wave around when they stop you. Until two days ago.

I was driving back from my trip to Nong Nuch and decided to stop and take a drone shot of Mimosa. Mimosa is a pretty dire experience, but everything looks better from a couple of hundred metres up (apart from Lagos, which requires two thousand metres and on a heading out of Nigeria), so decided to point my drone at it. Got the shot, and then had to do a U-turn to return to Pattaya; at which point I drove into one of the regular road blocks that the BiB operate in that area. Their normal ploy is to stop all tourists on bikes and scare them out of money; but I have never been stopped so was feeling fairly relaxed. Then I was waved down.

“Licence please.” I obliged and he perused it. Could I go now? “Your road tax is out of date, it expired in February last year.” I thought about telling him that his English was pretty good; but that “last month” would have been more accurate; but settled for “sorry”. “Pay here or at station?” “How much to pay here?” “One thousand baht.” “I only have two hundred.” (I always empty my wallet of cash while they are pontificating, leaving only two hundred to wave as possible ransom money). “Not enough.” And he strode away to write out my ticket. Damn.

Turned out that I had to go to Jomtien Police Station to pay my 400 baht fine and collect my licence (once you give them your licence you don’t get it back until honour has been satisfied), and this was only a kilometre or so away. My arresting officer gave me directions and told me he would come along in five minutes with my licence. I went to the police station, sat in the car park for fifteen minutes, and then went home. It had been, as I had expected, a Thai five minutes.

In the afternoon I presented myself at the road tax office and discovered that the policeman’s grammar had been perfect; the tax had expired in February 2013; which means I have not renewed my tax since February 2012! In my defence, I have been despatched to the tax office by she who must be obeyed every year when she forgets to renew her tax and panics. Also in my defence, I am useless. Apart from the 900 baht tax for each year, I had to pay some swingeing penalties for late payment; 126 baht for the thirteen months late payment for 2013, and 18 baht for this year.

Tax paid, I headed back to Jomtien to pay my fine and collect my licence. The clerk in the police station was extremely cute. I told her she was a fair cop but she didn’t get the joke; and then pointedly asked me my age as she filled in one of the two forms required to document my evil deed. Fine paid and she scrabbled around in a box full of licences, but there was no sign of mine. Ledgers were consulted and it was decided that my arresting officer had not handed it in.

“Take a seat” she suggested, “he’ll be here in five minutes.” I was tempted to ask her if that was the same five minutes that he had promised six hours ago; but as I mentioned, she was very cute and the guy sat next to her was equipped with handcuffs and a sour expression, so I sat down to wait. Twenty minutes later, PC Plod turned up and turned out his pockets. His filing system was not the best and my licence was not in pocket number one; although I was offered to choose any one that I fancied. Same result for pocket number two,and was I mulling the not too unpleasant thought of returning to the cute clerk and filling out a lost licence report. Finally, he reached in a top pocket and extracted the licence of Mr Hans and Mr Spike. Big smiles all round and I was out into the world with all documentation in order, after what had been overall quite a pleasant experience. I love this country.

Coffee with she who must be obeyed before she set off for work, and then decided to take a walk along Second Road and back along Beach Road. You probably can’t do much worse for street photography than a heavy, manual-focus, 270mm effective focal length lens; so sticking the Tair on the front of my camera was not a good idea. To further mess things up I decide to shoot using one of the Olympus’s art filters, which produced some “interesting” variations from reality. Still, this is what I got:

It’s been a while since I acquired my Russian Tair lens and decided to arise promptly this morning and take it to Nong Nuch Tropical Garden, with a plan to take comparison shots with my Jupiter lens of the same length.

I am not at my best early in the morning, so gear was packed and put by the front door last night. Into the truck this morning and I was at at Nong Nuch not long after it opened. Extracted the Tair from its carrying case; and it was at this point that I remembered that the lens does not fit on the case with the required adapter attached, and I remembered that the adapter was still at home in a box, and I remembered that I am an idiot. Another cock-up, to add to the forgotten memory cards, batteries and once the entire camera on previous outings. Still I had the Jupiter so knocked off a few flower shots with that:

In my previous life I worked in a company that always assumed that the worst was going to happen. As well as rigorously enforcing health and safety policies (which, purely by coincidence, meant we killed or injured far fewer people than you might expect given the nature of our business); we also had a crisis management plan for when things went spectacularly wrong.

The plan was written up in a large manual and kept in a room nominated as the control room should an emergency arise. Training took place, people were nominated into various roles and drills were held on a regular basis. It was just my luck to be “duty manager” when one of these drills was initiated; which meant I spent several stressful hours locked in a meeting room when I could have been relaxing with a coffee and planning my retirement,

If you had to choose the worst single source of news on the internet, you would find it hard to beat The Daily Mail. It offers a daily dose of skewed stories, most of which are trivial, none of which are served up without a sneer. They are well known for expressing outrage at perceived pedophiles, whilst simultaneously promoting photos that sexualise young girls. Immigrants and benefit-dodgers are the source of all evil and the key story of the day is an expose on which shop Kim Kardashian’s massive arse and tiny brain has most recently graced with her custom (i.e. collected freebies).

My recent commentary on the situation in Ukraine focused mainly on my concerns that I had just ordered a lens from Kiev and I did not want it to be delayed; demonstrating once again my core humanity and emphasis on what matters in my tiny world. I am now pleased to report that the bloodshed can now continue, because the lens arrived this morning:

For reasons I have already forgotten, I previously acquired a Jupiter 11 lens; 135mm of Russian manual focus goodness; and it certainly produces nice photos, like this one:

After arriving one month early, then on a day when nothing was happening, I finally struck lucky on Sunday where there was a full afternoon of leaping bikes to enjoy. The riders are not only insane, they must be very fit; because races last for up to one hour, which is a long time to spend bouncing around with a face full of mud.

The mud and the dust removed the colour from the bikes and riders, making their photos rather sombre; but here are few anyway:

Went to the Motocross World Championship today and very impressive (and hot and dusty) it was too. Many photos to follow in due course. Here is just one:

To mark the occasion, I can think of nothing less appropriate than a photo of a pit girl at Bira Racetrack. Please record your outrage in the Comments section.

Had I started Pattaya Days ten years ago, my posts would have been littered with stories about broken radio controlled aircraft and accompanying expletives. Building, flying, crashing and repairing model planes was my initial hobby of choice when I first retired, resuming an interest from my younger days (beware, contains unusual trousers). Once I had run out of models, and heartily sick of the build/crash/rebuild cycle; I took up photography instead; as you may have noticed. I occasionally pondered the possibility of combining both hobbies in order to take aerial photos, but the options always seemed too complex, expensive and guaranteed to end in tears; pretty much as it had the first time around. But the desire to take photos from the sky remained.

Most of us assume that the appropriate height to take a photo is the distance between our eyes and the ground when we are standing up. In fact we don’t even think, we just do it. Occasionally I try and remind myself that there are other views available. If I’m taking photos of children for example; I like to get down to their level. As well as getting lower, you can get a little higher; either by finding a natural vantage point, or perhaps by standing on a ladder on the edge of a racetrack (in retrospect, not recommended):