Back in Bangkok - My New Base

I've just got back to Bangkok after doing my first visa run to Vientiane in Laos.

By back I mean I spent the last month here getting set up to stay for a long time. I've now found an apartment, have my own internet connection, a phone number (shocking I know!) and will be based here for at least the next 6 months. If things go well, probably a lot longer.

After spending the majority of the last 4 years with no fixed address, I've made the decision to set up a more permanent base and change the way I go about things.

Why Bangkok

When you've been to a lot of different places, deciding on one place to stay can be difficult. The following list is a summary:

• Great food
• Relatively foreigner friendly for visas etc.
• Big expat base
• Excellent transport connections worldwide
• World class facilities are affordable
• I like it!

Given that bangkok is one of the transport hubs people are most likely to come through, I'm already starting to get a list of friends planning to stop through in the next few months. This was a factor in the decision too!

What am I going to do here?

Many of my friends don't really understand what it is that I do now. In the last few years I've been traveling the world and building up a portfolio of images that I license for commercial use in return for license fees.

In that time the travel component has taken up most of my energies and I now have a big backlog of work that has never made it any further than my hard drive. For the next few months I'll be working on that backlog and uploading suitable material to Istock.

Once I'm a fair way through the backlog, I'm going to be setting up some photo and video shoots on subjects that I've been thinking about for a while, but just haven't had the facilities to produce.

In addition to that I'm starting to set up a number of web projects that I'll be working on in areas that are of interest: Travel, Politics and photography. Of course I'll be devoting more time to this site. Expect to see a new series of tutorials for beginners wanting to improve their photography techniques, as well as some profiles of some of the best travel locations.

Does this mean you are going to stop traveling??

In short, no. Bangkok is one of the perfect bases for travel! But I will have a base that I'm going to be returning to!