Ron Emmons          Writer & Photographer
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Welcome!

What an amazing world we live in...to watch an audio slideshow introducing my website, please click here.
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The Sudanese Shuffle

3/7/2020

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Dancing in the desert
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Image by Alan J. Hendry (Unsplash)
Way back in 1975, I embarked on a life of adventure. My first move was to leave my native England and take a job as a volunteer teacher in Sudan. I was part of a group of 50 native English speakers who were hired by the Sudanese government to improve the level of English in high schools throughout the country. I was assigned to teach in Sennar, a town on the Blue Nile to the south of Khartoum.
 
I was supposed to spend a few days in Khartoum for orientation before taking a train to Sennar, but what with attempted coups and a heavy rain season, I had to spend a month in the capital before any trains started running. When I eventually got on the train and set out on my big adventure, I had plenty of time to write, so I got out my pen and began to scrawl the following words.
 
The Sudanese Shuffle
 
we were waiting for the train
which was waiting for us
until the train had waited for us
and perhaps 
we had been waiting for the train
for some days now
when we started.
 
we were starting in the train
when we stopped and waited
and went again
and when we went
we hardly went at all
while the wheels rolled around
at the onset.
 
after the onset we set out
to the desert and all its dreams,
while the wheels would roll round
and then stop, and then sound 
like they’d never be starting again.
Just as slow now as slowness can get
And we still haven’t quite got there yet.

 
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Before the Deluge

9/5/2020

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A review of the novel Bangkok Wakes to Rain
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Everybody knows that Bangkok will drown one day. It sits a precarious 1.5 metres above sea level, which continues to rise steadily due to climate change, while the city is sinking under the weight of its concrete jungle by a few centimetres each year. Some give it ten years, others fifteen. For the city’s 10 million or so inhabitants, this is a cause for concern, and the government’s efforts to stave off the inevitable with multi-million dollar flood barriers have all the pathos of a madman trying to hold back the tide.
 
The scenario is ripe for a dystopian novel, which Pitchaya Sudbanthad has provided in the form of Bangkok Wakes to Rain. This wildly ambitious debut novel jumps back and forth through the city’s history from the mid-19th to the mid-21st century, and by the end all that remains of the former capital are the tops of the tallest skyscrapers, with floodwaters splashing at their windows.

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Blogger's Block

13/4/2020

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This pandemic has me lost for words
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Tropical sunsets are off the menu
​Help! I don't know what to write, and this is a dire situation for a writer. The problem is that these days there’s only one thing on everyone’s mind—coronavirus. And while everybody and their grandmother has had their say about this invisible killer, writing about any other topic seems simply senseless. 

Like many others, I've found that my regular job, travel writing, has ground to a halt since nobody's travelling any more, So for now at least, soft-sand beaches and tropical sunsets are off the menu.

I've therefore hopped on the coronavirus bandwagon and written a couple of blogs myself. The first explains how a Buddhist perspective can help us avoid becoming hysterical about the situation, while the second suggests that we cultivate the subtle art of going nowhere to counteract cabin fever during lockdown.

These stories are posted on medium.com, a site with a paywall, but authors are permitted to share their stories through 'friend links'. Following are the links to those stories, which include embedded audio files in case you would like to close your eyes for a few minutes and listen rather than read:

Learning to Live with Impermanence in the Age of Covid-19
The Art of Going Nowhere
Publishing on medium.com has been an inspired choice, as the website pays writers when paying members spend time reading their stories. I recently received payment for my first month, which came to a staggering $0.02. This means I only have to earn another $4.98 before I cover my expenses for my first month’s reading.
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Medium.com is full of great ideas about relationships, technology, politics, philosophy and pretty much anything else you can think of. Currently it hosts over 11,000 publications and claims to have over 120 million readers worldwide.

And now I've got over my blogger's block, I know exactly which story on Medium that I'm going to read next; 'How I doubled my income on Medium in a month'.

For more of my stories on Medium, just go to medium.com/@ronemmons.

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Back when I was a bus driver

24/2/2020

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A London bus in Arizona
Back when I was a bus driver for London Transport, I used to drive the number 47 between Catford and Shoreditch, crossing over the River Thames at London Bridge. Crossing the bridge several times each day, I developed a fondness for this huge span of granite that connected the different worlds of south and north London. However, as I passed back and forth, the bridge was being taken apart to be sold to a rich American, so the story went.
 
Many years later, when I was touring around the USA, I passed a turn-off signposted to the bridge, and my curiosity drew me to look at its new location in deepest Arizona. I found the bridge was the focal point of a tourist village at the entrance to Lake Haversu City, a far cry from the grimy streets of London.
 
Still later, when I penned several travelogues recounting my quirky travel adventures, I reflected on my different experiences of the bridge on either side of the Atlantic Ocean. London Bridge Revisited is one of the stories in the collection called Searching for Shangri-La, which is available as an ebook or paperback on Amazon. 
 
I have also posted the story on this site, and if you’re curious to know what it’s like to drive a bus in London or visit a tourist village in Arizona, click here to read or listen to the ten-minute tale. 
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2017 update

17/1/2017

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A photo essay on the Mekong Delta in Vietnam
Time to freshen up the website for the new year, so I’ve made a few additions and changes. Firstly, I’ve added a few scans of stories that appeared in printed magazines (an increasingly rare form of media!) during 2016. These are:
 
- Deep in the Delta, a photo essay on the Mekong Delta for Jetstar Asia magazine.
--Strange Town, a focus on Antananarivo, capital of Madagascar, for the South China Morning Post.
--Blissful Bloom, a story about the sacred lotus for Morning Calm (Korean Air inflight).
 
I’ve also changed the sample story from my collection ‘Searching for Shangri La’. ‘Sweeping Meditation’ is a chronicle of my changing attitudes to the fascinating activity of sweeping leaves. There’s also an audio version of the story, so rest your eyes for ten minutes and listen to the tale unfold.


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Dunkirk: Birth of a Writer

28/4/2016

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When I was about seven years old, my Dad took me to the cinema to see a film called ‘Dunkirk’ starring John Mills and Richard Attenborough, about the evacuation of hundreds of thousands of British soldiers from the beach at Dunkirk as the Germans overran France in the Second World War. It was one of the first times I had been to the cinema, and the film made a strong impression on me, particularly the scenes of helpless, terrified soldiers trying to take cover in the sand dunes as German planes dropped bombs on them and strafed them with machine-gun fire.

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Cruising the Red River Delta

17/12/2015

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Watching the view unfold from a sun lounger
Usually when I travel, I’m updating a guidebook, so I’m rushing around from dawn to late, checking hotels and restaurants for inclusion in the next edition of the guide. But a few weeks ago I lucked out, spending ten days on a Pandaw cruise around Ha Long Bay and the Red River Delta in Vietnam in order to write and photograph a story about it for the company’s magazine, as it was a new route that they wanted to publicise.
 
Loved it! Sprawled on a sun lounger, taking in the endless change of view, from towering karst outcrops to container cranes, brick kilns, fields of rice and passion fruit, locals waving from the riverbank. Wandering around small villages, watching water puppet shows, seeing conical hats made, listening to traditional songs sung by teenagers. Writing a few notes about the experience and getting to know my fellow passengers, gorging on gourmet food three times a day. Following are a few images from the trip.
 
If you want to read the full story, take a Pandaw cruise and read it in the Pandaw Magazine while aboard, or sign up as a subscriber on their website—www.pandaw.com.


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The way up
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Red River abstract
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Making conical hats
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Enjoying a glass of bia hoi
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Container crane in Haiphong port
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Youngsters watching the boat from the riverbank
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View from the wheelhouse
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Clouds over the Red River
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Girls in ao dai at the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum
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Ron testing the local hooch
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Upturned eaves at Tay Phuong Pagoda
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Graduates throwing caps at the Temple of Literature
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Messed up in Mae Sot

20/2/2015

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The Thai border post at Mae Sot on a rainy day
To be a successful guidebook writer, you need not only good research and writing skills, but also a good sense of direction. This is one area of the job in which I normally feel quite confident, as I spent a few years driving minicabs in London as well as driving buses for London Transport, and I reckon if you can find your way around London, you can find your way anywhere.

When I’m on the road researching a guidebook update, I often have a list of 30 or more hotels, restaurants, bars, spas, pharmacies and so on that I need to locate each day in order to decide if they are worth recommending for the new edition of the guide. With the help of maps in the guidebook and online, I usually manage OK, but sometimes things go wildly wrong, and I always get messed up in Mae Sot.


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What's New in North Vietnam 2014

23/9/2014

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Schoolkids riding through the Ho Citadel


Having suffered perhaps more than any other nation in the 20th century, Vietnam is making up for lost time in the 21st century. The economy is growing fast, communications (especially roads) are improving everywhere, new hotels are being built and tourists are arriving in ever increasing numbers. 

Though few of the following places are 'new' as such, they are all either new to the Rough Guide for the next edition (2015), which I've just spent several months updating, or have been subject to change recently, such as the restoration work at My Son, a temple complex of the Cham people near Hoi An and Da Nang.

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Restoration work at G Group, My Son
Restoration at My Son
The My Son complex of Cham temples located in a lush valley around 40km from Hoi An is one of Vietnam's World Heritage sites and brings a steady stream of visitors every day to view the ruins of a once-powerful civilization. However, many of the ruins were in such a decrepit state that they gave little idea of how the site once was. Now a sensitive restoration project by UNESCO has brought back to life Group G of these temples, and ongoing work is transforming the ruins of Group E, which dates back to the 8th century.


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On Blamming and Spogging

3/5/2013

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On blamming

Don’t you just hate the internet? I mean, the worldwide web is amazing, with more information and entertainment out there than any of us could cope with in one lifetime, but when bugs start creeping in with unwanted attachments to emails, or suddenly your cursor freezes with no warning, cyberspace can become a real drag.

One of the worst problems for email users is spam, but I see on Wikipedia that my current problem, people spamming on my blog, is now referred to as ‘blam’. I’m now being blammed on a daily basis, and although it’s rather irritating, it has its amusing moments too.


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    Ron Emmons 

    is a British writer and photographer based in Chiang Mai, Thailand.

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Text and images copyright © Ron Emmons 2000-2020

Contact details:

Ron Emmons
122 Moo 7, San Pisua,
Chiang Mai 50300, Thailand.

Tel/Fax: (66-53) 115150
Mobile: +66-841758104

ron@ronemmons.com


Contact Ron
  • Blog
    • Introduction
  • Publications
    • Books
    • Periodicals >
      • Deep in the Delta
      • Strange Town
      • Blissful Bloom
      • The Wonder of Water
      • Striking Signs
      • A Hike up Chiang Dao Mountain
      • Quirky Chiang Mai
      • Trailblazer
      • On the Road to Rio
    • Digital content
  • Portfolio
    • Searching for Shangri-La
    • Travel
    • Biography
    • Nature
    • Buddhism
    • Photography
    • Article List
  • Biography
    • Ron's CV