Young Thai temple dancers perform at a Theravada Buddhist street shrine in Bangkok, accompanied by traditional wood xylophones, cymbals and a two-sided rack-mounted barrel drum. Devotees can hire dancers to perform and sing prayers, often as a form for making merit or giving thanks for previous prayers answered. Digitalized Noritsu Koki slide scan, shot with a compact point-and-shoot flash camera.

The devotional street performances are colourful and striking at night but seldom approach the more refined and formal dance form of Thai classical Khon, an elaborate masked dance drama that draws on a variety of the arts (drama, dance, pantomime, music) in performing the story of the Ramakien, the Thai epic adapted from the Indian Ramayana.

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A monk’s quiet moment inside Wat Chayamangkalaram, a colourful Thai temple in the heart of Georgetown, Penang, West Malaysia. Digital slide scan, shot with an Asahi Pentax Spotmatic, circa 1973.

While the Theravada tradition of Thai Buddhism prevails at this temple, Taoist and Mahayana Buddhist elements associated with the predominantly Hokkien-speaking Overseas Chinese community in Penang are likely incorporated into a larger syncretistic body of Buddhist beliefs.

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