Village Girl

Village Girl
Originally uploaded by ampr1150gs.

Aidan's Asian Blog

Must start using this blog... Previous posts can be found at www.aidanpphotography.com

Travels with my camera...
07/02/2006
I went to pick up my camera from the Konica Minolta offices in downtown Bangkok, its been two months since they took it in for repair and I was looking forward to getting it back.

I got to their office and handed over my repair docket and was delighted when they brought my camera out to me a couple of minutes later. Unfortunately, the delight didn’t last long. The ba$tards hadn’t sent my camera away to get fixed and it had been sitting in their office since December! I wasn’t too happy and they told me no one from the company had been down to Singapore since December, do they not have a postal service in Bangkok? I told them that it wasn’t acceptable and that I spent a lot of money on the camera for this trip. They told me that my camera was very advanced and that they couldn’t fix it in Thailand. I told them that I knew it was advanced which was the reason I bought it.

Since I dropped my camera in for repair Konica Minolta has sold off its photography business to Sony. They tried to tell me that this was another reason the camera wasn’t fixed, but I told them that the sale only went through a couple of weeks ago and that they had my camera for over two months. I might as well have been talking to a wall. They then suggested that I go to Singapore in April and get it fixed by Sony, I thought that I did very well not to punch the guy in the face at this stage.

I tried my camera out when I got outside the building and it was working again… I took several shots with it, but when I switched in on later in the evening it had stopped working again. I don’t know whether to get a new camera or not. I checked the prices in Singapore on the Internet and I’ll have to work out whether it’ll be cheaper to buy it here (if the Nikon D200 is available in Thailand that is) or fly to Singapore and buy it there. There is a cheap bus service (two days travelling though) but its not running at the moment due to the fighting in Southern Thailand.

I’m off to Chang Mai in the North of Thailand tomorrow, it’s a big area for trekking and hill tribes. I’ll probably stay there for a week or so and hire a motorbike to visit some other towns in the region. I’m not sure where I’ll go after that. I’ve been thinking of visiting Burma before I leave S.E Asia but the only way in there is by plane and travel within the country is pretty difficult. I’ll be flying to India at the end of Feb / beginning of March, not sure where to exactly, but probably Delhi as I can pick up a motorcycle there before touring the country.