Bangkok, the City of Angels, is in hiding under a month-old coronavirus lockdown.
With 10pm-4am curfews, a ban on the sale of alcohol and stay-at-home restrictions in place, the city famous for its go-go nightlife has been forced to turn in early.
One mass transit skytrain rider snoozes at a safe social distance.
With a population estimated at anywhere between 8-12 million, the main arterial road junction at the city’s iconic Victory Monument would usually be jammed with traffic.
Yet now on any given day it hosts a single, empty taxi or a couple of motorcycle couriers delivering takeaway food to nearby homes.
A normally teeming elevated pedestrian walkway now hosts empty advertising boxes in the absence of foot traffic, while a lone Buddhist monk walks past shuttered shop fronts beneath.
Local hospital staff offer Covid-19 assistance at the entrance of an intensive care unit, happily posing for photographs. Outside a surgical glove lies discarded on the empty pavement.
Popular sacred tourist sites like the Grand Palace and Wat Phra Kaew are closed, though devotees still light candles from the outside.
A lone masked man pushes his cart under an overpass on a Covid-19 darkened lane.
In a vacant parking lot along Sanam Chai road, Thais form a long line for bags of free green mangos provided by a motorcycle charity organization offering relief to hungry citizens.
In another neighborhood, free food packs are distributed to Covid-19 impacted needy Thais.
In Chinatown, giant Buddha statues overlook a row of shuttered shops as a surgical masked man strolls by. Nearby, Buddha images glimmer and shine amid the Covid-19 doom and gloom.
Words and pictures by former Asia Times photo editor Paul Lakatos