Pattani, Thailand
Che keeps some strange company.

This Che Spotting comes to us courtesy of writer and traveler, Joel Carillet. His photography book, 30 Reasons to Travel, was released in 2008.

About this picture he said:

I took this shot in a bus station lobby in Pattani, a predominately Muslim town in Thailand’s deep south.

In the four years preceding my 2007 visit, an insurgency had claimed, on average, two to three lives per day in the region, and the number of people traveling to towns such as Pattani had dropped to near zero.

The town was full of interesting juxtapositions, but this scene in the bus station was the first I encountered.

Given Pattani’s conservative nature, where a few Muslim women cover not only their heads but also their faces, the topless image was surprising. The image of Che however, while mysterious in this context, was anything but.