Drive along Bangkok's busy Ramkhamhaeng Road and you may spot an unusual sight: commercial aeroplanes in a field on the side of the road, miles from the nearest airport. This overgrown lot is an aeroplane graveyard – where decommissioned passenger jets go to die. It is the final resting place of two McDonnell Douglas-built MD-82s and all that's left of a couple of Boeing 747s after they were dismantled.

These abandoned planes are home to three families. The seats have been ripped out and the bare interiors have been partitioned to create rooms. The residents say they began living in the jets because they were unable to afford Bangkok's rents.

The residents of one of Bangkok's more unusual housing developments eke out of a living by collecting and sorting recyclable rubbish. They occasionally supplement their income by charging tourists and photographers 100 Baht (about £1.80, $2.77) to look around their homes.

Aeroplane graveyard Bangkok
A woman prepares to take bags of plastic bottles to a recycling centre in Bangkok Taylor Weidman/Getty Images

The planes' valuable electrical wiring and components have been stripped out and recycled. Oxygen masks, safety manuals and inflight magazines lie scattered across the floor, almost as if the planes had crashed in a field in Bangkok.