A young Thai woman sits under a picture of the nation's king in her home inside a dilapidated airplane on September 12, 2015. Taylor Weidman/Getty Images
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An elderly Thai lady sits in front of her collection of toys, which had been thrown away by their original owners inside her home, in a disused airplane.Taylor Weidman/Getty Images
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Disused airplanes sit in a field. Taylor Weidman/Getty Images
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A young boy plays outside his makeshift airplane home.Taylor Weidman/Getty Images
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A Thai woman hangs laundry outside of her makeshift airplane home.Taylor Weidman/Getty Images
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A Thai man smokes a cigarette outside his home inside a disused airplane.Taylor Weidman/Getty Images
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A man climbs out of his home in Bangkok's airplane graveyard.Taylor Weidman/Getty Images
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A Thai man fans himself with a piece of plastic while listening to a battery-powered radio.Taylor Weidman/Getty Images
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A Thai woman smokes a cigarette before traveling to a recycling center with bags of plastic bottles outside her home in an abandoned airplane.Taylor Weidman/Getty Images
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A Thai man carries water to his home inside one of the airplanes.Taylor Weidman/Getty Images
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A Thai woman returns to her home in the airplane graveyard after washing.Taylor Weidman/Getty Images
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Debris lines the body of an abandoned airplane that has since been turned into a makeshift home.Taylor Weidman/Getty Images
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A Thai family prepares to travel to a recycling center with bags of plastic bottles outside the airplane graveyard.Taylor Weidman/Getty Images
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A Thai woman and her young son examine watches to see if they can be resold.Taylor Weidman/Getty Images
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A family sits together inside their makeshift home.Taylor Weidman/Getty Images
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A woman walks past one of the planes now sitting in Bangkok's airplane graveyard.Taylor Weidman/Getty Images
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A man walks through his home inside a disused airplane.Taylor Weidman/Getty Images
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An elderly Thai lady sits in her room. Taylor Weidman/Getty Images
See What Life Is Like For Residents Of Thailand’s Airplane Graveyard
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In recent years, impoverished families in Bangkok, Thailand have turned disused, deteriorating airplanes into makeshift homes.
Families like these often gather trash and recycling, which they can sell for a couple dollars a day, in order to get by. But that's certainly not enough to pay rent, so they remain on the outskirts of society, living in ruins.
That said, according to The World Bank and the United Nations, Thailand is one of recent history's great success stories in terms of economic growth and poverty eradication. In fact, the country went from a low-income one to a high-income one in less than a generation as the national poverty rate fell from 67 percent in 1986 to just 11 percent in 2014.
Nevertheless, there may still be as many as approximately 7 million impoverished people in Bangkok, many of whom are likely still reeling from Asia's financial crisis of the early 2000s. And some of those desperate people are the ones who have now ventured into the city's airplane graveyard, and taken refuge inside some rather unlikely homes.
Next, check out the tiny homes that artist Gregory Kloehn built to fight homelessness. Then, step inside seven tiny homes that prove size doesn't matter.
Established in 2010, All That's Interesting brings together a dedicated staff of digital publishing veterans and subject-level experts in history, true crime, and science. From the lesser-known byways of human history to the uncharted corners of the world, we seek out stories that bring our past, present, and future to life. Privately-owned since its founding, All That's Interesting maintains a commitment to unbiased reporting while taking great care in fact-checking and research to ensure that we meet the highest standards of accuracy.
Savannah Cox holds a Master's in International Affairs from The New School as well as a PhD from the University of California, Berkeley, and now serves as an Assistant Professor at the University of Sheffield. Her work as a writer has also appeared on DNAinfo.
