The Photography of Dr. Jeff Harper

Hua Hin is a Royal beach town about a 2 1/2 hour drive from Bangkok; close enough to drive for a week-end, far enough so it is no too crowded.  It is my favorite town in Thailand  . . .  well, besides Loei.

The Morning:

In addition to being a destination for Bangkok week-enders, it is also a real, bustling market town.

I am a bit of a creature of habit when it comes to my trips to Hua Hin.  My favorite place for breakfast/brunch is the All In Hua Hin, a German restaurant and store.  It is said that perhaps as many as 150 Germans and Scandinavian snow-birds retire to Hua Hin each month.

I don't know what it is about this place, but as soon as I sit down in it, I feel like I am on vacation.

All In Hua Hin is also, in some ways, a small town German grocery.  Cheese, meats, condiments, and other foods from Germany made available to the growing retirement community makes Hua Hin feel like a hybrid Euro-Thai town.  Nice. There are many such establishments in Hua Hin, but this is my favorite.

Warm, baked-just-for-me rolls, paprika sausages, German mustard, and the best god damn yogurt, beet, pickle, and herring salad on earth! My favorite lunch.

The Wet Market:

After my lunch I fitted my new 70-200mm USM II lens and went for a walk to the Hua Hin wet market. Although the wet market is quite large, you sorta-kinda have to know where the entrance is - amid the confusion.

The wet market entrance is on the left, half way down.  This same street is converted into the famous Hua Hin "Night Market.".  The cars are cleared and market stalls are set up.

The market area attracts a lot of local color . . . and local characters.

There are various ways to get yourself and your products to and from the market.

The pick-up truck bus conversion is common in small town Thailand.

The wet market spills out on to the streets nearby . . . into the cart world.

Cart world presents you with very hard decisions even before you enter the wet market.  These scrumptious little buggers are to absolutely to die for!

Once inside the wet market the world changes: the science of product arrangement fully on display.  Lots of dried shrimp, fish, and assorted fish snack here.

One of my lifelong hobbies is the worldwide quest for "What Counts As A Snack." This array of bagged finger food certainly rates a 9.3 on the Harper Scale of Obscure Snackage (HSOS).

Squid (sa-quid in Thaiglish) snack at its best; fresh from the drying racks. Pungent, piquant, pretty tasty.

The amazing new 70-200mm lens is an f2.8, so low light is no problem.  I wore a bright green t-shirt so I would blend right in . . . . a forest, not a market!

It's a good thing to have a long low light telephoto lens in a market so you don't have to get right up in people's faces. A chicken merchant at work.

Hua Hin is a seaside town, so fresh sea food abounds.  This iced squid in the wet market is surprisingly photogenic, don't you think?

Fish of every kind, size, and color is for sale.

The Hua Hin wet market.

A Hua Hin chicken tender, of sorts.  There is a large fresh meat section in the market.  No USDA inspectors to be seen anywhere . . . or refrigeration either.

The proper way to cure pork filet, au naturale. This may be my best meat portrait ever!

A potential Frank Zappa or Captain Beefheart album cover. Meat framing is novel, don't you think?

You don't see this every day, thank Goodness. The meat section of Thai wet markets always have these hanging about in their mock porcine serenity.

A part of the au naturale meat curing is a thick layer of grit and grime. "Waiter, I'll have that pork chop well done, if it's not too much trouble."

There is a small Islamic population in Thailand. The market had this delicious halal hot curry paste for non-pork cookery.

Islamic Thai halal curry paste vendor.

Grind these and press them for their milk, add to the curry paste, add some chicken and veggies and you have a wonderful meal.

There are many sections to this market, including the fruits and vegetables.  Life spent day after day in  the same market stall seems to conjure an indelible patina of longing.

Helping Mom in her market flower stall.

The accouterments of Buddhist practice are everywhere.

Incense bundles.

I can  spend all day in these markets: the light and shadow, color and smells are completely captivating.

The perfect Thai market photo? I love this still life.

My daughter's favorite snack: dried fish strips.

Portraits of stacked dried fish is not for everybody, I know, but I am fascinated by the color, textures, and pattern.

Dried fish with sesame seeds, a variation on the theme. A strong sense of otherworldly actuality is somehow induced in the presence of these wonderful assemblages of light and color.

Nice in soup and the Thai noodle dish, pad thai.

Back out on the street and down an alley to my truck, the view changes.

Right out of the pages of The Saturday Evening Post.

There is something to say for a lack of maintenance: it makes for beautiful aesthetic surfaces to photograph.

Like this.

The Seaside Buddhist Temple:

I decided I wanted to go to see the big Buddha statue on the sea. The beach is developed for tourism, but there aren't too many tourists these days. The only vacationers are the horses!

There were a few ocean bathers . . . with hats and t-shirts on so they wouldn't get dark from exposure to the sun, a major Thai concern.

The Hua Hin Buddha colossus.

There is a large rock head (literally, hua hin in Thai) that juts out into the sea with a colossal Buddha statue and Wat (Thai Buddhist temple) on it.

It was a wonderfully peaceful place.  This monk selling amulets, a nun selling incense, gold leaf, string, and candles were the only other people there.

I bought incense, a candle, and gold leaf to place on the altar; and two strings to tie around my wrist to remember the occasion as a blessing. These old Wat altars are fantastical things, thick with age and the residue of its own devotional history.

Some Buddha images are considered extra-ordinary and seem to command more gold leaf application than others.

Small Buddha statuary is available for purchase to adorn the family altar.

Many Thais wear these encased Buddha amulets, sold at Wats.  There is a huge trade and speculative market in these, seemingly against all the tenets of Buddhism.

For me, the Buddha image is an advertisement, from the past, for what good can be done with the mind, in the present.

Flower actuality.  Thanks Buddha for helping me notice.

The Night Market:

After a wonderful two hour afternoon oil massage I met my wife at her golf course and we headed to the Hua Hin night market.  At dusk every day the same street that accesses the wet market is cleared of cars and the many stalls of a night market are erected.

Hua Hin is not called a market town for nothing.  There is something Medieval about the night market, as if the setting up of this market has been going on for thousands of years.  It's good to see it has lasted into the present, in spite of the cancerous spread of the multinational mall and cheap goods emporiums.

The same street in which I took photographs this morning in front of the wet market entrance, now a beautiful blue dusk.

The night market was strangely empty . . . it was not a three-day week-end and there was a threat of flooding in Bangkok.

As darkness descended, the brightly colored textiles stood out in the night stalls.

The Night Market is made up of walking vendors, stalls, and carts, like this sticky rice and mango vendor has.

My favorite desert, beautifully displayed.

A mother and son sweet roti cart.

Other desert carts specialize in Asian Ice Deserts. "What Counts As Desert" also applies here: beans, corn bean paste, wheat, green gelatinous worms . . . . all very good on ice with coconut milk.  Your choice!

Fancy some dried meat?  Fresh or packaged? 

The Hua Hin night market is a good place to go for a seafood dinner . . . and we have many times.

Looking into a market stall is like looking into a face; complex and telling.  These photos are like a human portrait.

You select your own ingredients for your fried noodles.

A smoothy cart enveloped in the immensity of the universe.

And what would the universe be without tropical fruit?

You can find just about anything at the Hua Hin Night Market.

See anything you like? Wood carvings and bronze castings.  The Hua Hin night market has an endless variety of . . . . .

. . . . beautifully hand-crafted, hand-carved candles in wooden boxes . . . . .

. . . . and mundane things . . . . and . . . .

. . . . and sacred Buddha votive items for the home altar . . . .

. . . . many, many sacred Buddha things. I do not approve of the selling of dismembered Buddha parts (heads, hands, and feet are common) as tourist souvenirs.  If you own a [whole] Buddha statue, you must take care of it; it belongs on an alter and must be tended with respect.

The faces of the stalls fascinate.

These night market stall portraits never cease to fascinate.