Unknowingly, we’d pounced on Stockholm on a bank holiday weekend – perhaps the odd restaurant lunch service and convenient store made the casualties list, yet the whole of Stockholm wasn’t holding back.

Especially on beautiful days like these.

The Scandinavian capital glistened as its numerous waterways, crisscrossing the city’s landmass, basked and illuminated in glazes of sunlight; a population, work- and school-liberated, took to the streets in paces no hastier than a saunter.

Surrounding them, greened copper coated spires and statues – icing on olden architectural spectacles housing monuments, museums, shops and apartments. Their inner substances, worthy of a Swedish pride, flaunted regularly behind window displays amidst the recognised renaissance of interior designing.

Stockholm’s creative muse isn’t the organised chaos of Berlin’s, or societal dissent of East London’s – judging by its meticulously aligned streets, its cleanliness, its innovative yet not outlandish designs, the city strives on an aspiration for comfort, a sort of tidied sophistication that gives inspirations for better living.

A stroll around town on a sunny, crowded day alone may leave quite easy an impression on you.

Hover over the images for a caption detailing the source of each snapshot and what they represent; click the images for their enlarged versions for a better view.

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As the plane bore low above the ground beneath, shroud of moonlessness bolstered the legion speckles of neon white, intertwined with veins of amber and ruby; while hovering alarmingly close over Saigon, the landing was akin to slicing onto a field of gems and diamonds. My excitement was pulsing to the luminous electrification.

I’d be in the city sooner if it wasn’t for the congregation buckling before the booth, labelled “visa on arrival” in bold.

Gingerly, I threw myself into the civilised crowd. Half an hour later, I was bickering my way into a foreign country.

*

If you haven’t heard about it already, I can be exceptionally tardy, if not outright last-minute, with travel logistics.

For the months I was aware of the Vietnam immigration policies, I hadn’t acted upon it until my dawdled days running up to my flight from Singapore, when even a speedy visa application at the Vietnamese embassy in Singapore was too late.

For Vietnam remains one of the countries where one cannot simply show up with a British passport – amongst many of its counterparts – without applying for a visitors visa beforehand.

I did however have one alternative left: a Google search yielded a cohort of websites advertising as online agencies, offering a “visa on arrival” application process; they would organise a pre-approval letter from the embassy, which I would simply present at the airport, pay the fee and ‘instantly’ – prevailing queue, that is – receive legitimacy of entry.

Straightforward, surely?

I pounced. Perusing through tiers of visit length, a one-month multi-entry visa – bearing in mind my plan to detour to Cambodia before returning to Vietnam – seemed ideal. A barrage of clicks paved my entrance.

*

Crowds cast a numbing nausea on me, in turn my judgment. My innards scorch yearning to liberation from the heightened density, its mental counterpart won’t silence until it’s extracted from the surroundings.

Amidst internal turmoil, the brozen face nudged me on the shoulder – stripes-laden sleeve shoving documents into my hand at waist level, the customs paperboy barked something at my chest.

Like I spoke Vietnamese.

Universal lingo it was – I shrugged at him. He nearly gave me a papercut.

Two long identical forms to fill in, the paperwork turned out to be; scrawls slashed across blank spaces as my strokes raced – only in contest with the shortening queue ahead, efficiently shaved at the front desk.

As I clicked the pen in triumphant completion just in time, my first-ever adrenaline rush in Vietnam.

Documents snatched. Pre-approval letter scan-read on my phone. Passport seized. Instruction to wait – obliged. Not quite the finish line yet.

That explained a congregation beyond the linear queue: as the visa-printing micro-factory laboured, everyone has to wait.

To respective names, static limbs sprang and propelled individuals to a second front desk – then, the visitors’ victory stride towards the customs desk and beyond, unhindered.

Not that my name was called out any time soon; clenching the US$65 notes – fee for one-month multi-entry visa – in my pocket to wish away time was just a little consolatory wishful thinking I tricked myself into believing.

The plump little woman before me exclaimed her excitement in what was intended a contained monologue; fashioning a once subdued grin, she fairy-hopped to where her prize awaited.

Before she, in a hall of tranquillised voices, expelled American-accented bellows at the desk.

Her demands fell to empty ears – or, rather, ones that didn’t understood much English.

Hers was the indignant stroll, ferociously quickened yet trawling in defeat; I wouldn’t have guessed what mishap befell that tantrum.

Until when the same thing happened to me.

My facial muscles constricted to my Chinese name being read out. Threw me by surprise. Waltzed wrong-footed on the first step. Regardless – passport surrendering and all would be forgiven. I approached, wedged $65 under the booth window. The clerk counted the money. Big smiles, no more surprises.

“Ninety five.”

Yes, I acknowledged. But my visa was a month-long one; the extra $30 would be for its three-month counterpart.

“No – more than 30 days. You pay.”

Flurry of explanation. Neither party budged. So that’s what the fuss was about.

She could have my money, I figured, for even if I were to claw my way out of the situation I’d still have the extra $30 invoiced. Plus additional broken nails.

Since I couldn’t reason – not across the language barrier, anyway – that whilst the online agent had arranged a one-month visa, the visa-on-arrival office charges on the basis of less than 30 days or more. The month of January had one day too many to advocate the case in my favour.

Adrenaline circuiting bloodstreams once more, I pushed the additional money through the gap; yet I couldn’t care as much for monetary loss as being robbed of my gratitude when returned passport, my apprehension when stepping out of the airport – only injustice and suspicion accompanying the beginning of my Vietnam adventure.

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There’s something rather contradictory about Beijing.

On one front, its striving crusade towards modernity, contemporary building rise above structures of antiquity as readily as the bulldozers dispatched to erase outdatedness, just as the synthetic-clad populace trample over forgotten buried relics; yet the sentiment for preservation prevails and spares enough historical sites to be deemed celebrators of the past, of the former might flexed by imperial dynasties.

Funnily enough, the juxtaposition spells a charm curious enough to captivate the hordes of visitors the capital city receives.

Where the hutongs swell in passing figures, the Forbidden City bolster in entrance queues, restaurants rise in cacophony, Beijing isn’t old because it is – it is the way it is, or looks, under the obligation to empower the present with its past.

That, and putting up a bloody good show for the tourists.

Hover over the images for a caption detailing the source of each snapshot and what they represent; click the images for their enlarged versions for a better view.

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As invulnerability goes, for a potentially injury-prone two-month stint in Southeast Asia, all I managed was a petit scratch on my knee against a seabed coral.

I chuckled to said statement before a more concerned crowd, contemplated its irony – as blood streamed out of my upper lip and teeth, crimson staining the bundles of tissue pressed against my mouth and tattered elbow.

Contemplation helped distracting me from the shock, the humiliation and, not least, what screeching excruciation a tipple-less tumble could possibly inflict.

To be surrounded by face-blanched haemophobes and sympathetic tenders to my wounds in our group, delayed by my plight, it was one fall I certainly wasn’t expecting so close towards the end of my trip.

*

Perhaps I was hasty to draw a conclusion to an unfinished voyage of sorts; but then, after all, I had my constraints.

I may have had my insufficient opportunities to capture photography of food for my project, traversed fewer grounds than intended paths, exited Saigon with a little more emotional attachment than I bargained for, than I could save from distance’s severance – I still would have a flight to catch, back to London, a heck load of self-improvements to implement, and a couple of electricity bills too many to settle.

Amidst all the inner-conflict I’d stepped off the plane in Hong Kong from Saigon feeling, well, weirded out. I’d lost the breezy ease, the savvy, perhaps the very quality that kept me vigilant and road-smart. And incidents-free.

Returning to my birthplace I’d let my guard, so fatiguingly carried for two months, ever within my sight, drop and disappear into carelessly-packed rucksack. Don’t need it: I’m in familiar territory, surely?

But there I was, admitting to Oli that I hadn’t been in Macau since ten years ago.

Interiors of the jet boat transporting us between Hong Kong and Macau, the terminal and particular street scenes do invoke familiarity, yet the circumstance was entirely new: Oli and I had met at an Instagram meetup in Hong Kong just two months ago – the photo walk we were about to attend was merely my second.

I wasn’t thinking straight – which, in hindsight, was particularly dangerous as our group hiked up a sloped street, when I noticed the rank of chains suspended between poles, fencing off the pavement.

I’m jumping over that.

The leap. As right foot traversed over the obstacle, left foot got caught on the chain and didn’t make it across. Body, anchored on one limb like a drafting compass, spun forward. My face hit the asphalt first, and the first ebbs of pain erupted above my upper lip; it cushioned my front teeth, yet concussed and felt knocked out of place.

Red stained my clothes, smudged my hands where I’d placed over my mouth. I was in shock, though probably not as shocked as fellow Instagrammers who hurried to my rescue.

*

The bleeding may have stopped, yet the bruised of my left knee kept me limping – adding to the conspicuousness I had the glaring white bandage plastered beneath my nostrils.

For once I got a taste of how it’s like garnering constant stares in Asia.

As all eyes fell on me earlier at the scene of injury, I did my redemptive act – showing crimsoned teeth in a smile that perhaps struck as horrifying than reassuring – of urging my group to carry on with the walk without me. Only Eloa, a Macau resident among the lot, kindly stayed behind; after regaining composure in a nearby restaurant, I decided it was best I sought some medical attention.

Thus I was treated to the hospitality of Catholicism: on a Sunday, every dental practice within limping distance greeted with closed doors, and taxis were as scarce as scarcity could afford.

When we were finally spirited away to an operating hospital, and I was patched up, there was the wait – unstaffed facility with over-demand of sick people.

Bugger the queue and let’s rejoin the others, I said to Eloa.

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Curiously, amongst pitstops at landmark-dubbed pagodas and temples, my trishaw driver swivelled into a narrow alley and pulled up behind the sinophilic archway.

In his somewhat patronising tourist-ushering tone, one I grew accustomed to after cruising the old quarters of Vietnam’s Imperial city, Hue, he instructively implored me to get on my feet and go “take picture”. Sheepishly, like I had ever since his somewhat-charismatic sales pitch lured me onto his vehicle, I obliged to his ‘guidance’.

But then, not to his disservice, he did drop me off at a pretty cool spot – half a dozen of indifferent-looking huafu-clad saleswoman, guarding yet eager to part with a store-front of expensive jewellery under condition of cash reward, aside, this hidden estate with its Chinese-mimicking architecture did clasp my curiosity.

May as well, since I was there.

I meandered within the property, a world enclosed inside the greater confine, an enclave imposed with Chinese scriptures and bonsai landscape; then, a flinch at the corner of my eye – my footsteps, brushed and rustled against gravel, startled the puppy snoozing on a front porch.

Camera lowered, we gazed upon each other – it, canine ears raised, in alert, and I, impeded in pace, threat-easing and reassurance.

It broke the eye lock first, head drooping, lazily blinked before parting with consciousness once more.

With our fleeting interaction terminated, I returned to my own business and departed – but not before portraiting the animal in its serene habitat.

Behind the lens

Click thumbnail to enlarge

This photograph is the result of two experiments of photo-editing techniques.

With the harsh lighting, it was near impossible to attain clarity for both the sun-exposed front porch and darkened interior. So I used a function in my camera called bracketing, which automatically alter the exposure settings between a number of shots – the precursor to HDR photography, the merging of several images of identical frame but varying exposures to generate optimum visuality.

From that, a problem arose: the puppy, dazed in over-exposure, was over-saturated in appearance. Which is where the second technique, masking, comes into handy.

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I must have wondered for hours if any of the windows on the train would budge.

After all, there wasn’t much else to do on the way to Hue – other than soring snoozes on a stiff bed and reiterating to my berth-mate, a heavily pregnant woman, that I don’t speak Vietnamese despite my Asian looks.

Terrific: I’d worked out how to open one.

Gingerly, wrist strap-donned and grip affirmed, I poked the camera lens through the window and my eye into the viewfinder. The preying began.

The predicted unfolding of rice paddy fields and palm-clustered woodlands blitzed past – peering through the hole, it was as though the motionless scenery had carouseled, and the speeding vessel containing me that remained static.

Coordination: vision zapped electric currents to brain, translated message to imagery then to decision, spurring fingertip to apply pressure and trigger the capture – the triangular conveyance of action, reaction dictated my prowling stance, as the sporadic clicking of snapping shutters resonated and swiftly drowned against the clatters of railway steel.

Then, amidst a countryside morning largely devoid of visible human presence, the conical hat-donned silhouette manifested along the rail-side dirt path.

As swift as the fraction of second its appearance prevailed, an incentive had to be made; trigger pulled and visuality immortalised, I retired my camera from its sniping position and inspected the catch.

I may not have seized it with my own eyes or camera, but, scrutinising my latest capture, I most definitely caught myself pulling a self-congratulatory smile.

Behind the lens

Click thumbnail to enlarge

I may have metaphorically reversed the roles of moving and stationary object in literature, yet the principle of shooting remains the same regardless of whether I’m capturing movement or photographing from within a vessel in motion.

The key lies with a fast shutter speed. 1/1250th of a second, as for this shot.

Another requirement is concentration – in observation of any opportunity worth snapping, a vigilance especially when chances materialise and reside within matter of milliseconds. Even when, during this photoshoot, I took a decent amount of images worthy of note, I still had my fair share of regret from missing out on captures by lateness of split seconds.

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“Hopelessly lost” didn’t quite describe my ill-fated quest to find my hostel in Kuala Lumpur.

The innocent-seeming prelude unfolded shortly after I parted ways with two German travellers and a Buddhist monk; where exactly I may identify in hindsight, yet at the time I could only describe my arrival from Penang as being dropped off in the middle of nowhere – except the knowledge that I was near Chinatown’s Petaling Street, and that the Starbucks on the opposite side of the street could offer some answers.

Then I acquired the address: Jalan Tun HS Lee. Everything should be pretty straightforward henceforth.

Should it?

For the duration of the next half hour I wandered far and disorientated, unaided by lack of mobile data, deprived of Google Maps, before long the prolonged search did yield the correct street sign – then, anchored to linear progression of the path, scrutinising the decreasing street numbers, I expected to see BackHome Hostel show up anytime soon.

Except the furthest the Jalan would stretch – where it ended – was 100. 30 HS Lee was what I was after.

No matter, the self-reassurance sparked; I must have gone too far.

The forlorn pacing repeatedly up and down the street must have numbered ten laps, or perhaps quantified as a good deal of an hour going around in circles, asking a dozen of near-oblivious locals.

One false lead in my investigation provided the final straw; I shall enquire one last time, then relinquish the responsibility of path-finding to a cab driver.

At first I mistook him as the shopkeeper of a closed camera shop, sweeping his store front as the final bearing of daily chores. I homed in, hitchhiking-learnt best behaviour and courteous tone to mask my fatigue and frustration.

He uttered a lot of right’s and left’s. I could handle no more.

“Can you please help me find a taxi and make sure the driver charges me by the meter?”

The man shifted; under the remaining light bulbs his complexions, skin tanned amidst his Australoid features of a young Malay, suggested he was troubled. He shook his head. He didn’t want me to be ripped off, he claimed.

Just as swiftly as he had dropped the broom, he scurried to an adjacent back alley and retrieved his bag, exchanged a few words with whom I could only assume were his friends, then returned before me.

“I take you there, walking.”

I had my reservations – I may have judged a little when he told me that, as opposed to being the shopkeeper I thought he was upon first impression, he was in fact homeless.

For the past seven years.

In between stints of arrests from drunken unruliness – a free bed at least, he admitted – he had drifted in the neighbourhood, lacking job and little means of sustaining himself. Everything he possessed lied within the backpack he carried, that he recovered earlier.

“Many nights I sleep outside Reggae Bar.” I know the place rather well – I went past 158 Jalan Tun HS Lee quite a few times previously.

Amongst the cluster of traffic noises he mumbled his name, which I repeated under my breath before telling him mine. To my shame, I didn’t commit it to memory.

As it turned out, he wasn’t entirely sure where BackHome was either. In between us, mustering three languages – his Malay and my Cantonese in addition to English – we received numerous directions, of varying versions, until I found myself retracing his steps back to where the odyssey began, the very street where my guide hailed a man driving by on a motorbike.

“This guy own many hotel here – he know every hotel here.”

Revelation. The string of dialogues in Malay had spurred him into remembering precisely where my coveted bed was.

Just as I was becoming more and more curious about his affairs.

He was from a village outside Penang; just as I had travelled south, he arrived at the capital seeking work, yet downtrodden works of destiny had him embroiled in alcoholism, which resulted in life on the rough.

“Have you gone home?”

No, was the answer. He hadn’t spoken to his parents for the past four years, only relying on acquaintances to inform him whether or not they were alive and well.

I didn’t push him to explain why he hadn’t gotten in touch – I merely had to observe the shame in his eyes.

“You’re a good person – try not to forget that.” I uttered as we pulled up outside of 30 HS Lee, said our goodbyes – and he didn’t ask for anything in return.

*

I waited until the hour struck quarter past.

The previous night, before we parted ways, I promised I’d buy him dinner and get to know each other more if he’d meet me outside the hostel at seven in the evening the next day.

He, in turn, hesitated.

“I try,” he hollowly pledged. Already he explained how he didn’t want to be seen with me, for the prejudice and preconceptions of onlookers may have him deemed exploiting tourists.

Given just how many individuals we sought directions from sprang conclusions of my being led astray by a homeless person taking advantage of me, his gift of kindness may have cost him his streetwise credibility – his chances of survival.

I could only lament: that would be the last I’ll ever see of him.

For he wasn’t going to show up.

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The atmosphere had escalated in intensity since the near-desolation in Saigon’s train station a few hours ago.

Stammering motorbikes, like working bees returning to the hive, zipped by in their swarms offloading volumes of cargo, some precariously balanced on vehicles that were actually smaller in size.

In comparison, the movement of people were more ant-like; the shuffles, occasional knock-about’s and shoves, to-and-fro lacking sense of order as man pressed man and man’s possessions past the two door and onto the platform.

I ordered an espresso at the station café. No rush, I reckoned, preferred to scrutinise than join the fray. By quarter to seven, the action had subsided – time to make a move myself.

Finding my carriage and compartment was a little tricky, but I did eventually decipher the train ticket with the timely aids of condescension – ticket inspector, conductor, occupants of spaces I wrongly stumbled into, all took a jab at ‘educating’ the tourist.

Dropping my bags off in the correct room and bunk, I couldn’t resist catching a shot of the platform and train ticking towards departure time.

Amidst the air of inevitability, uniforms animated in flickers of inspecting tickets and wristwatches; farewell bidders loitered behind the yellow line, mouthing words in Vietnamese I may only assume as final words, parting instructions. There were smiles, laughter, occasional tears, the static exchange whereupon one party would lose parallelity in shared timeline and gain forward momentum, as with the vessel and its passengers.

Conductors retracted upon the blow of whistles. Faces beyond the train windows began to shift, as do sights catching last glimpses of loved ones – until the waving hands, and eventually the platform itself, was within the train’s line of vision no more.

Behind the lens

Click thumbnail to enlarge

Ah, low light. How so very often do you work against my favour? And no, I couldn’t offset your dimness with camera stabilising tool, since I wasn’t travelling around Southeast Asia with my tripod – and in departure time-pressed constraint, I left my GorillaPod in the scurry.

Three ways to counter this particular dilemma: small f-stop value, slowed shutter speed, and extensive post-capture editing. This particular image required f/2, 1/50th of a second, and toddling of settings on Lightroom to achieve the final result.

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I was wondering what my aunt referred to in her usual childlike exclamation, about a fountain inside Singapore’s Changi Airport.

Just as she lamented that the “fountain” was gone, I noticed the array of drooling bulbs suspended on the other side of the departure hall.

“Is that it over there?” I remarked. The sheer revelation reinvigorated her glee.

For a moment, the congregation of admirers seemed to be revelling the static matrix of orbs hovering above their heads; then, stillness went kinetic in a skyfall of raindrops, as the bronze ‘spheric’ sculptures were actually shaped, descending in tardy elegance and disorderly randomness – an imitation of delayed metallic shower.

Then, the pool of pseudo-aquatic casts sprouted momentum again, now cascading in rhythmic harmony in lieu of disarray, fluttering in tidal, chevroned movements of crashing waves; the collective of raindrops folded against all spacial dimensions, rose and fell in synchrony of tightened and widened wavelengths in constant fluctuation.

Before long, sculptures regained individuality as they, in regularity, ascended heaven-bound.

Apparently, my Aunt Irene was right: it was indeed a fountain of sorts.

Behind the lens

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This “depth of field” concept, as photographic as it may most closely be associated with, is really a means allowing our vision to establish distances in imagery. How camera lenses alternate between depths of field by changing their aperture is merely mimicry of our eyes’ function: controlling the amount of light reaching the retina, or colour receptors just like inside a camera.

With the kinetic sculpture, to correlate the scale and positions of the bronze raindrops, I decided to shoot with a shallower depth of field; the result was just as my own eyes had perceived it, with a contrast between focal sharpness and blur giving sense of the distance of individual sculptures from where I stood, incorporating the background of photographers, out of the range of short-sighted perception.

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Nostrils-full of incense, religiously pungent yet sweetly aromatic; vibrations of percussion, pulsing through the ground and onto my feet; squeals of the nadaswaram – an Indian wind instrument akin to a horn – whizzing like sharp but oddly melodic jabs into my ears; then, peeking through the threshold, sheer vibrance of frescoed hue and painted statues.

Those combined lured me into investigating a procession taking place inside the Hindu temple I just happened to walk past.

I sighted Sri Mariamman earlier on my way to meet Leif Pettersen at Maxwell Food Centre and thought little of it; even though the temple’s façade and pointed roof of figurines caught my eye, under overcast sunlight its faded colours distracted only a fraction of my hurriedness towards a belated appointment.

I did pledge to come back and check it out later – a somewhat open, empty promise.

Later, strolling down Telok Ayer Street through Singapore’s Chinatown, the blinding floodlights brightened and saturated the gopuram entrance tower, its rows of decorative sculptures and dioramas; but it was the sensory overload from within that spun me, that piqued my curiosity.

Then, coming back out, the gopuram finally captured my admiration the third time round. It was the more analytical eye, activated by pleasure of observation at the procession, that I viewed the structure: a near-pyramidic sternum of societal or divinal hierarchies, splaying ribs possessing the sculptural portraits of individuals and scenic reenactments, each containing a story of its own.

Together they constitute a culture I’m yearning – and have yet – to learn about more.

Behind the lens

Click thumbnail to enlarge

Photographing the oldest Hindu temple in Singapore at nighttime does present a bit of difficulty.

Well, actually, it wasn’t that hard. The floodlights provided the lighting as per perceived by the scrutinising eye; being the un-advocate of flash photography that I am, I was just glad the illumination helped a long way in allowing me to shoot at a relatively fast shutter speed – compensated by a shallower depth of field, no less – so that the image it yielded didn’t get too blurry from the quiver of my hands.

Then it’s down to post-production on Lightroom to boost the vibrance a little by highlighting individual colours and adding structural clarity to the sculptures.

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