A LETTER FROM THAILAND
From John Blyth (Area 20).
(John is a long standing member who lived in Ealing, West London, worked at British Rail and was also the Editor of the Stephenson Locomotive Society Journal).
I emigrated to Thailand over a year ago and now settling in free from time to time to keep in touch with old friends. There have been many difficulties but they have been overcome one at a time and life is quite pleasant here. Happily, this coastal town (Pattaya) on the Gulf of Thailand does not suffer the rainfall of Bancock, only 90 miles away, where heavy rain over a long period have made both railways and roads impassable for weeks on end.
I rent a three bedroom apartment in a block, two rooms are air conditioned and the living room has a ceiling fan. Shops and supermarkets are nearby and open until all hours and I can shop a few yards away at long after midnight, if I want to do so. Local transport is very frequent and cheap and on the go for 24 hours; we do have a railway along the back of the town, the newest in the country, opened in 1982, but the passenger service is so bad that we all go to Bancock or other places by bus. There are 4 air conditioned buses to Bancock each hour from 5,40am, and the none air conditioned buses run even more frequent.
All the railways are of the Metre Guage, but the loading guage is quite reasonable; only the weight restriction of 17 tons maximum on any axle restricts them, and now we have diesel electrics up to 3200 hp. from Hitachi, in Japan. Steam is kept going in a small way with four operable locomotives, two of which are used quite often on specials, the Royal Birthdays and Railway Commemoration Day are the most regular. The latter just happens to be my birthday, so this year, when they ran three steam specials, I was able to celebrate by seeing one go out in the morning and the other two come back into Bancock (Hun Lamphon station) the same evening. Hand-held and with Ilford delta film, I was able to wrap myself round a pillar in the station long enough to get sharp negatives of each of these on arrival.
Currently it is the wet season, but when the weather settles down again I shall hope to go out a few times and see what the railway is like to the north and the North east. The former leads to the northern capital city of Chiang Mai, the latter line splits, on going through Nakhon Ratchasime to Udorn Thani, the other more to the east to Ubon. I do not speak the language but I have found many from the North east, where there is bad poverty and unemployment, come down here to look for work, and their knowledge of English is surprisingly good.
I had already been down south to the border with Malaysia and beyond, when I was here in 1971/2 on holiday, and came back by train last summer when I had to leave the country and get a new Visa to be allowed to remain here. I was on the overnight train and it was, I found, comfortable enough, although one reads of plenty of complaints. 80 years ago one could travel from Bancock to Singapore in a through train. Now only one train goes as far as the border at Padang Besar, and another one thence to Butterworth, the port for Penang Island (where the visas are to be obtained). If you want to go on, there is a connection down to Kuala Lumpur, capital of West Malaysia, and then another connection down to Singapore; it is in all about 1000 miles.
Photography; I have not as yet managed to process a single colour reversal film, and here it is not very easy to obtain, although it can be found. In Bancock it is much easier. Here the photographers` shops are all aimed at the tourist, and so they all sell you a roll of colour print film, which you can hand back to them and when exposed they will give you a set of expensive and badly done prints within the hour.
But I have feelers out; I am known at Kodak (Thailand) Ltd., in Bancock, and also in a tiny photographic shop in the Chinatown area. From each I can buy the Kodak home process kit, alleged to process 30 films; this is dependent on there being a reasonable keeping period for the part used concentrates. I do not weigh and mix, and could see no way of doing so out here, even if I wanted. So for the present I am on Mono, and even that has its interest. First, to find film. Well, the Kodak place, or the little shop, or the China marketing Co., who import Australian Ilford products. I have had some trouble with them in getting replacements for some duff paper they sold me, and we are not out of this even now; they do not answer letters, so it is a question of getting into Bancock some time when convenient and going into see the manager (only at work in the mornings).
Both Kodak and Ilford paper are expensive, and no cut rate shops either! So I have been persuaded to try a `local` brand of paper, Chen Fu (never heard of it? neither had I!), which is less than half the price, and which has the snag of not being multi-grade, so you buy three boxes each of a different contrast. I had got a supply of Kodak Dektol, in powder form (in the U.K. it is sold as a concentrate), and had used this with Ilford and Kodak paper without trouble; but Chen Fu`s product kept going brown in the image, sometimes in patches and other times all over. I don`t go for sepia toning personally, but that was what I was getting! I discussed this with my friend at the shop who swore it couldn`t happen, and I came to wondering if it was the temperature, as it is hard to keep anything below about 85 deg F., and some times the tap water comes out at 100 deg or just over - ideal for E6! So I tried keeping the temp. down a bit by dropping an ice cube into the dish every so often, and this seemed to help but was not too convenient and I was always short of ice cubes for other purposes. I was then told `Yes`, they had another developer, Da-163, also by Kodak, and as it seemed, cheaper. Was it the same as Dektol, I asked? They were not sure but they hoped not, so I bought a packet, and tried it, and Bingo! - not the same at all, no brown images, not the same characteristics at all, and so, off we go. A print of mine, on Chen Fu paper, processed in Da-163, was in the `Bancock Post` yesterday, so that is a step forward.
Negative processing? Yes; again forget the old 68 deg. F (room temperature!) Ilford FP4, in Ilford ID11 stock diluted 1:3, developed for 8 mins, at 75 deg F or somewhere like that will give good, strong, and almost grainless negs. as long as the fix and wash are around the same, otherwise it may reticulate. So look out for 100 deg tap water!!
The way round this is to wait until after dark. The storage tank is on the roof and catches the sun during the day, but around sunset all the people come in and try to have a cold shower. Tough, it is 100 deg ! - but if you wait until they have all showered it will begin to come out again in the mid 80`s. As they say here, all the time, No Problem !
One trouble I have had is with the deterioration of emulsion on colour slides. I am not sure if it is the warm and wet atmosphere out here, but I found when I examined my slides, or some of them, not long after they arrived, by sea, taking about 3 months to do the journey that some had formed area of mould on the surface, sometimes emulsion side, sometimes not. I had seen this once before, when a friend in Southall who had emigrated to South Africa, found that the climate in Natal, which is not different to this, had done the same thing to some of his slides. In his case only the emulsion side had been attacked, and I found that this could be helped (i.e. the mould removed) by the use of Johnson`s film cleaner and preserver, now long off the market. It left fine lines in the emulsion which could only be seen on projection from very close up and then only if you knew where to look.
Even now I am not certain if the damage to my slides was only caused after they arrived here, or if they got it during the long sea voyage, in which they were in normal cases, etc., of various types and materials, and not too well packed in big cartons all packed in a container.
My experience is worse than that of my friend, in that I seem to be finding different kinds of mould. That on the film side seems to be tiny organisms that grows fine hairs which simply radiate from the centre. They wipe off and leave no trace. Another seems to be almost the same but on the emulsion; again this will come off with washing and the swelling disappears. But by far the worst is one that attacks the colour dyes. It has turned an area of deep blue sky on an Ekta slide into a bright yellow !!! - believe me? - and even Kodak dyes, said to be very stable, are not immune, as I have a few in which small areas of green grass has turned a pale mauve ! There is no way to repair this kind of damage.
I got in touch with Pete Guy on this and he was very helpful. Pete put me on to First Call Photographic, who did not answer my first letter, but did the second and also sent me their catalogue, but no suggestions as to what to use. I again asked him for help, pointing out two possibilities , and he sent a bottle of one of them `ASPEC` emulsion cleaner, which I have not yet had time to try.
On this we await events. It is all knowledge, if one can acquire it and put it to good use. I have had to throw out, so far, about 12 slides, but have not got to the end yet, or even near it. What the eventual score will be I cannot guess.
In the July CRCN I noted the entry about processing B&W at 100F. I do not try to process under such conditioned, indeed I do not use tap water for film processing as it contains some nasties which not only make it not recommended for drinking by Europians, but also will attack the emulsion on B&W paper and in some cases destroy or damage the image. It can dry out as a kind of hard brown crust, which no means I have found yet will remove. But that is not the point. I have processed B&W at around 82F. Although the results have been quite satisfactory in almost every case, I would not like to go higher. I have used ID. 11 (Ilford) as I can get it in small doses for a 1 litre stock solution which I find will last a long time under normal refrigeration. I have used this for HP4, diluted 1+3 for 10 mins at around 80 to 86 deg, and similarly on Selo pan; I have also used it on Ilford Delta at around the same temperatures for 6 mins at full strength. In each case I have had good, strong, and almost grainless negs, there having been one exception when something went wrong and they came out rather thin.
At such levels it is, of course, paramount that the washes and the fixer are kept very near the temperature of the developer itself. I shall be very interested in hearing of anyone who does develop at 100F. and how they get on.