From temple grounds to coffee table | Bangkok Post: food

Thai culture is easily misconceived, by the Western world particularly. And discussions about it can revolve around superficial symptoms rather than its inherent qualities. But cutting through the academic rhetoric and reality-TV-show misinformation is a book that focuses on an aspect of the culture that can be accessed by all _ Thai temples.

With a simple premise in mind, a group of foreigners pooled their talents to produce a memorable and sincere portrayal of the structures that lie at the heart of the ancient and settled Thai culture. It takes a careful and considered brush stroke to flesh out the intricacies of a culture as delicate and ravelled as Thailand's, and the new book, aptly titled Buddhist Temples in Thailand, tackled the task in coffee table format, with good results.

The book invites the reader on a journey through the magic of the structures with its easy-flowing text and congenial photography. The photo montages come easily off the page into the eye, as they blend photographer Dan White's photos both as full pages, bordered collages and dispersed with Thai iconography from the temples themselves. The text is evenly distributed so as not to interrupt the visual journey. More so, it adds a gentle commentary to the trip for the reader, inviting them in for more, rather than blasting them with statistics or anecdotal over-narration.

Joe Cummings, long-time Thailand resident, offers his vast knowledge and sympathy for Thai culture in the prose throughout the book. In his preface, he writes: "Like your neighbourhood 7-Eleven, wats are not closed on weekends or full-moon days," inviting all readers in through an assimilable everyday cultural reference and, at the same time, destroying any grandiose religious fervour that fanatics might try to pin on the subject matter.

His familiarity with and adoration of the topic comes through in his writing: "I can't live in any other country because the thing I miss most, along with the cuisine, is the temples. Even when the art and architecture aren't all that inspiring, I enjoy the temple subculture, the monks, the dek wat [temple boy], the visiting grannies, everything."

BUDDHIST TEMPLES OF THAILAND: Available from all good bookshops for 1,200 baht.

White, whose photography is the other essential pillar of the book, talks of a strange familiarity he felt with his inanimate yet life-like subjects. Many "perfect" photos of temples around the world exist, but White seems to have captured a raw side of the structures through his photographic eye.

"I was a history of art major, so I have long had an interest in religious architecture," he says.

Did he find the task, that took him on a journey of 12,000km, difficult? "Many [monks] were very enthusiastic about their particular wat and very keen to pass on information and history.

"I did crash the motorcycle into an errant and inconsiderate dog at 80kph near Pran Buri," he confesses. "I was covered in cuts and bruises but was otherwise OK. The dog was entirely untouched and sauntered away from the scene of the accident without a care in the world."

But how did three men from different corners of the world end up focusing on something so foreign to them? Just a simple idea says Cummings.

"Greg [Lowe, the producer of the book] noticed that although there were academic books about Thai temple architecture, and books about Thai art and architecture in general, there wasn't a single volume in English describing the cream of Thai Buddhist temples for the layman. I suppose he came to me because he knew I had studied Southeast Asian art history for my master's degree, with a particular focus on Buddhist art, and had written about most of the more well known Thai temples for a number of guidebooks."

Discourse on Thai culture entered the international media recently via Australian chef David Thompson, who was quoted in a New York Times article talking about the "decaying" authenticity of Thai food on the eve of the opening of his restaurant, Nahm, in Bangkok.

"The Thais should be praising Chef Thompson for taking their cuisine so seriously, and many are," says Cummings. "You're only hearing from the intellectual cranks, none of whom have actually tried his cuisine. What's really missing from the discussion is whether Thompson's Thai food tastes good. Which Thai cooks are better? Let them come forward! The consensus has been Thompson is doing an admirable job of taking Thai to a haute cuisine level without losing its ground-level appeal."

The temple book emerges as another attempt at a Western approach to capturing a strain of Thainess, and it has so far avoided criticism from Thais, a lack of which that perhaps speaks volumes.

Rather than trying to define Thai temples, and indeed Thai culture, the book works more to celebrate them and share them in a tangible and simple light. The strength of the publication lies in its warmth, and gentle approach to the subject matter, revealing both something about the culture and also the tenderness the writer and photographer feel for it. Both insightful and enjoyable, it will hopefully bring a wider audience to an integral aspect of Thainess, shedding further light on the subtle intricacies of the culture without controversy or cliche.