Ron Emmons          Writer & Photographer
  • Blog
    • Introduction
  • Publications
    • Books
    • Periodicals >
      • Black, White and Blue
      • 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
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  • Short Stories
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    • The Green Monkey's Tale
    • The Red Lion's Tale
    • Eruption in Ethiopia
    • First Flight
    • As Dawn Breaks over Choroni
    • The Hungry Eye
    • On Spirit Mountain
  • Biography
    • Ron's CV

Welcome!

What an amazing world we live in...to watch an audio slideshow introducing my website, please click here.
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Look on the Bright Side...

20/7/2017

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Thailand's 'Land of Smiles' tag is not a PR gimmick—it's true!
Putting the world to rights in five minutes
Our planet is in a mess—environmentally, economically, socially and politically. Hardly a day goes by without some horrific news about villages buried under landslides, politicians arrested for corruption or suicide bombers blowing themselves and everybody nearby to bits. Despite amazing advances in technology during the last century, we don’t seem to have learned anything about how to live together despite our differences. Even the modern sciences of psychology and sociology have no blueprint for improving relationships.

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From Muddy Confluence to Cool KL

5/3/2017

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KL's best-known icon—the Petronas Twin Towers.
‘Kuala Lumpur’ means ‘muddy confluence’, referring to the meeting of the Gombak and Klang Rivers. This name was probably appropriate when it was a small tin-mining settlement in the 1850s, but it doesn’t quite capture the vibrant mood of the gleaming city that stands there today. Now you’d be hard pushed to find the confluence of those rivers, hidden somewhere between overpasses, underpasses and soaring skyscrapers; in fact, ‘cement city’ would be a more accurate, if unflattering, title. I’m not sure whether it’s because Kuala Lumpurians want to disown their muddy heritage, or perhaps because acronyms are currently fashionable, but these days the city’s inhabitants prefer to be called KL-ites, and their city simply KL.
 
I’ve been to KL several times before, but never got nearer to the city than Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA), which is over 50km away, to the joy of taxi drivers. Now I find myself based in the city for a few days researching a story on Malaysian starfruit, and find time to check out a few sights.

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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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On the Trail of...

29/7/2016

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Recently, I’ve been on the trail of vanilla, the magical spice that flavours our cakes, custards and ice creams. Along the way, the trail took me to Madagascar, where they produce the finest vanilla in the world. It’s called ‘Bourbon vanilla’, after the former name of nearby Reunion Island.
 
Did you know that vanilla comes from an orchid (vanilla planifolia)? That its flower has to be pollinated by hand in order for the vanilla pod to grow? That the pod must be picked on a particular day of its growth, and then go through various stages of conditioning for almost a year before it is ready to use?
 
I didn’t know any of this; I didn’t even know what a vanilla pod looked like, but I found out pretty quickly before boarding a plane to Antananarivo (better known as Tana), Madagascar’s crazy capital.


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Wicked Wikipedia

19/5/2016

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Y'all know Wikipedia, dontcha? That wonderful bastion of philanthropy, the so-called ‘free’ encyclopaedia staffed by selfless sharers of essential information—one of the world’s ten most popular websites, written by the people, for the people?
 
Well, I got news for you—Wikipedia is wicked, and I don’t mean that in a ‘so bad it’s good’ way. I mean wicked, as in nasty, calculating and, worst of all, corrupt.


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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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Journey through Vietnam

6/2/2016

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Trying to cross the street in Hanoi
There’s an element of serendipity to my current job—writing the text for a photo book on Vietnam called Journey through Vietnam. Some years ago when I was working on a souvenir book on Thailand (Portrait of Thailand, published by New Holland, UK), I proposed a similar book on Vietnam, since at the time I had visited all regions of the country and felt I had enough strong images to make a good job of it.

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If you can't beat them,...

29/12/2015

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I’m sure I’m not the only photographer who has watched with dismay as online stock photo (or microstock) libraries have mushroomed over recent years. Why dismay? Well, I used to sell my travel stories to clients as a package of words and images, of which the images would often be worth half or more of the fee. Yet since these image libraries have expanded to cover every destination and topic under the sun, and since their images are available for use at US$1 or less, most publications I work for now want me to provide text only, which means I’ve lost about half my previous income.

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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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Adios Hola!

20/7/2015

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ADIOS HOLA!
"Goodbye hello!”…reminds me of an old Beatles song, but the website hola.org is something much more insidious than anything we knew when we used to go round singing “I don’t know why you say goodbye, I say hello”.

A friend recommended it as a useful site that would enable me to watch programmes on the BBC iPlayer, which is generally not available outside the UK, as well as any other websites that are generally blocked in the land where I live—Thailand.

Being a sucker for anything that makes life a bit easier or more fun, I downloaded it and for a couple of weeks enjoyed my new-found freedom—watching the final of Wimbledon tennis and a few insightful documentaries—but then the trouble began.


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    Ron Emmons 

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

    Categories

    All
    Buddhism
    Hiking
    Myanmar
    Nature
    Personal
    Photography
    Post Apocalypse
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Text and images copyright © Ron Emmons 2000-2021

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 >
      • Black, White and Blue
      • 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
  • Short Stories
    • Beyond the End of the Road
    • The Green Monkey's Tale
    • The Red Lion's Tale
    • Eruption in Ethiopia
    • First Flight
    • As Dawn Breaks over Choroni
    • The Hungry Eye
    • On Spirit Mountain
  • Biography
    • Ron's CV