Photographer Kim Buddee has an eye for finding beauty in the ordinary and uncovering the charm of the patina of age and decay.
He does this with one of the world's most flourishing travel destinations - Burma - and shares his journey.
A NEWS ARTICLE about bulldozers threatening Yangon encouraged Buddee's growing interest in Burma.
Buddee, who has a background in architecture and film set design, wanted to see the city's heritage buildings before they were demolished.
When he arrived he was enamoured by entire streets of old, large buildings from the golden age of what was then called Rangoon - a city untouched by development for more than 100 years.
"What was terrific about them was... they survived a century, survived a bombing in the Second World War, survived 50 years of totalitarian regime.
"They're sitting there as they were. It's almost like someone turned out the lights and left them in 1930."
TRANSPORT SCENES were among Buddee's favourite to photograph for his coffee table book Once Was Burma.
He became hooked on transport, he says, especially the dilapidated buses left over from World War II.
"The roads where they use (the buses) are really bumpy, they're not sealed and they've got potholes," he tells AAP from his Sydney home.
"You see these buses and they kind of rock along, and they cough and splutter, and perk out fumes, and clunk clunk."
QUIRKY THINGS catch his artist's eyes too, such as the "spaghetti of cables" hanging above Yangon's streets.
Hidden among them are strings that have clips attached and that are connected to the doorbells of apartments above street level.
With no intercom, electricity or lifts, Buddee explains when people visit each other they pull on the string and it rings the doorbell. The resident will then be alerted to their guest and greet them from their balcony.
The strings are also tied to bags of groceries and newspapers, which are then lifted to apartments.
THE PEOPLE ARE still very friendly and very interested in foreigners, says Buddee, because they haven't been exposed to many tourists.
"If you want to take a photograph, someone will probably be looking at you anyway because it's such a novelty to see westerners, and they will look at you with friendliness," he says.
"I just love the spirit of the people there."
The national costume, the longyi, which is like a cotton sarong, is still worn by 90 per cent of the people, he says.
A LOT IS happening in Yangon, says Buddee, but most of the country is still of another era.
"It's a vast country and is still vastly untouched, and wonderfully interesting," he says.
"If you think of Yangon being lost somewhere in the mid-20th century, then there are parts of Burma that are somehow left in the 12th century."
- Once Was Burma by Kim Buddee is published by Tour de Force Books, rrp $69.95
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