One Week In August

Chapter 1

Monday, August 21st

A small tree shrew scurries through the thicket, pads over a few fallen twigs scattered on the ground and cautiously approaches a piece of papaya that has fallen from one of the nearby tables. It quickly steals it and flees back into the branches of a nearby bougainvillea bush where the lush flower clusters protect it from the gaze of the people walking all around. Sitting on its hind legs, it nibbles hastily on its trove.

Phupha slowly kneels down, puts the camera up to his eye, and adjusts the lens. A breeze is blowing the branches of the bush slightly to the side, letting the sunshine touch the tree shrew's grey fur and - there it is. He presses the shutter and takes a shot of the little specimen surrounded by pretty pink petals and bathed in patches of bright sunlight. He changes the angle slightly, the animal now looking straight at the camera and this will be just perfect -

The loud shriek of a child running away from its parents startles the small rodent and it rushes back up a tree and out of Phupha's sight. He sighs. This is the fourth shot that was ruined today due to people being...well, people. Loud and obnoxious and inconsiderate of the hidden world of smaller creatures all around them. He notices a few of them trampling over the plants, crushing budding flowers and oblivious snails under their feet and throwing the plastic wrappers of their snacks straight into the shrubbery without a care for disturbing the delicately balanced system of nature. To them, it's nothing more than pretty scenery.

This isn't Phupha's usual kind of job. He's a wildlife photographer, and his usual workplaces are the deep forests surrounding the little village of Pha Pun Dao where he lives. On a normal day, he'd fight his way through the dense jungle, past the waterfall, and up into the mountains, alone and undisturbed. He'd walk for hours into the thickest part of it, searching and waiting for the perfect opportunity to capture the raw beauty of Thailand's wilderness, untouched by human interference and unseen by most people. Over the years, he has built up a reputation for himself, managed to build a good following on his blog and Instagram account, and his series on a hornbill couple that he worked on for several years even made it into National Geographic. It doesn't make him rich by any means, but he doesn't need much up in the village and prefers to keep his belongings limited in numbers. All he needs to be happy is the quiet buzzing of the forest, the smell of earth and wood surrounding him, and his camera.

But every once in a while, he needs a well-paying job to fund his projects which is precisely the reason why he's here, in the middle of a bustling park just outside of the city of Chiang Mai. The city's tourist board wants to roll out an image campaign and promote its new botanical garden, positioning themselves as environmentally conscious and sustainable, so they asked Phupha as a local photographer of some renown to take some glamour shots of the new park. He usually doesn't take jobs like this, doesn't like the artificiality of planned urban, recreational spaces like this with their perfectly measured flowerbeds and carefully trimmed trees and controlled animal populations conveniently limited to what is considered cute and palatable. But it pays rather well, and he has a big and pretty costly project planned on the islands of Tarutao, so he accepted the offer, packed a suitcase for a week and had his best friend, Nam, drive him down the mountain roads into the city centre.

Phupha feels strangely displaced here. He arrived only yesterday but wishes he were back in his forest already. He'd much rather fight against thorns and shrubbery and be bitten by mosquitoes than wind his way through dozens of people swarming the narrow walkways and be subjected to the shrill buzzing of their voices. He doesn't mind a spider resting on his arm or feeling the roughness of bark scratching his legs, but the feeling of a stranger brushing his shoulder when walking past makes him tense up and feel like something is crawling down his spine. He's so used to the quietness high up in the mountains that even the relative emptiness of this park on a Monday morning seems slightly overwhelming. It's distracting and makes him feel self-conscious, a constant prickle on the back of his neck keeping him alert.