There’s really no word for it. After the relative quiet of Chiang Mai – which on any given weekday is three times as busy as Toronto except during Pride Week – we’ve dropped back into ‘the shit’. If Toronto were a basketball team and Bangkok were a basketball team we’d have 20 baskets scored against us before we looked up from our shoes. It is fast, intense and complicated. At least at first blush.
The airport is world-class; meaning there are kilometres of cool, shiny corridors with beltways that ultimately arrive at shiny metal carousels where people crowd like cattle at a feeding troughs even though their bag is nowhere in sight. Ok, time to air an age-old gripe. Why do people do that? If we all just stood two paces back until our bags appeared there would be ample space for all at the carousel. Is it me? Am I just too Winnipeg? For instance, in a country where one is obliged (good idea by the way) to take one’s shoes off before entering a space (room, dining area) why do most people just step out of their shoes and leave them in the center of the stairway or doorway as a stumbletrap. Are they unaware that there are people with poor balance, bad eyesight, good manners? who recognize that a clear stairway is safer and more practical? Already I’ve digressed. I don’t have this blog roughed out so it might be a bit too fast and loose. It looks like this might be a gripey one. Let’s see.
Bangkok is a wonderful, cacophonous, complex, vibrant jigsaw of all sensory input – all dialled to 11 . Blast-furnace hot so everyone has a glossy sheen to their complexion. At night the streets bristle with neon signs and intense, white linear neon tubes that frame food vendor and market stalls. Oh, oh, Blade Runner again, or is it Dune? The colours are absolutely deluxe, to use a friend’s term. Cyan, magenta, yellow, tangerine with garish citrus green being a foundational hue. Lovely. I saw immediately that this was a treasure trove of nighttime photography. One of my first thoughts was that Shannon Wong would love this place – maybe not the cleanliness but the light – oh man. Totally Shannon. Huge billboards along the highways with unintelligible messages for what? Air con? Family values? Shampoo – I can’t tell what most of them are trying to sell. Real Estate for sure. The coloured lights play off the glossy, dark and tanned flesh in the marketplaces creating Tretchikoff fantasias that would have made my dad have to lie down and take a nap. For those not familiar with the artist – you will likely have seen his work – sort of crass, black-velvet type images of exotic brown women with cyan light limning the cheekbone or a tangerine fill dancing over impossibly beautiful cheekbones, the dresses are Thai-baroque sarongs of teal and gold. Alastair was a fan.
Once we oozed out of the airport bus into the filthy, greasy Thunderdome streets of Khaosan Road we drifted along, trying to align with the vibe. Young road warriors with massive rasta locks, loose Thai trousers and gauzy cotton tops. White dudes in sarongs, complex tattoo work everywhere covering significant acreage on their bodies. Laughter and adventure are in their eyes and on their faces. Their bodies poised for the impossible promise of a night in Bangkok. So that’s what?... Matrix 2 – just start the right beat and everyone will launch into a tribal groove. The path is narrow on this wide street because the vendors nudge all the way in. Food, t-shirts, wigs, corn-row and braiding, Thai massage (what a surprise!), sunglasses etc. are offered. The buildings are alive with crowds of Europeans and Aussies gulping down Singha and Leo beer at 80 baht per bottle. Perfect, slender Thai girls in skintight sheaths with brewery logos on them are enticing the passersby to sample.
The theme music of Bangkok would be Madonna – we hear her everywhere. The Queen of lurid, fetishist sex with a chaser of material consumption. The concepts seem hardwired into Bangkok’s urban microcircuitry. The next morning outside our hotel; soft strains of Ludwig Van’s Moonlight Sonata seems an unlikely choice at first but it sort of seems oddly right for the post-coital spunk of the place. Soon things start to wind up again, through cheesy classics by Dolly Parton through Kenny Rogers and on to some CW artists I am not familiar with. The Buddha bar lounge doesn’t catch fire until late afternoon. Like Caban: musical form = function.
Tuk-tuks and motorcycles nudge their way into the narrow soi outside our hotels, adding their funk to the morning clarity. Vendors stalls unfold like ungainly insects stretching their wings in the morning sun. One gets the sense that you could buy anything. Anything. In Bangkok – if you had enough money. Rent boys vogue along the margins of the road. Callipygian B-Girls walk with rolling gaits, striking the pose from time to time.
The river is the backbone of the city. It is a generous meandering waterway, perhaps 300 metres across. Chocolate brown and dotted with floating debris and excrement it winds easily through the megalopolis. It visits the more famous Wats and Temples. Narrow Klongs or canals extend laterally like ribs to permit smaller boats access into neighbourhoods not immediately adjacent. There are crocodiles in these calm waters, and children swimming and playing. ????????? There is a fantastically efficient bus system of ferries that operates through the river that is by far the best way of travelling through this part of town. 13 Baht to get on makes it a fantastic bargain. That’s about 40 cents and you can take it for miles. There are also immense black barges that look like something straight out of Frank Herbert’s ‘Dune’ they are about three stories tall and half a city block long, chained together like some Bratwurst sausage with a thyroid condition. They would be packed with a royal household’s belongings and folded into space in that novel, don’t know where they’re going in this one.
Walking through a Chinese Market that specializes only in fabrics, trinkets and accessories (plastic jewellery). It is perhaps half a kilometre long. Though technically it is a laneway or soi the entirety is covered with a patchwork of tarpaulins and plastic sheets. Now and again some ancient pushes a fruit or ice cream wagon straight into your thigh. One has the sense of being indoors, so when a young fellow on a motor scooter nudges past on the sardine-packed aisle, parting it begrudgingly like the Red Sea it is a bit of a shock. You will find images of this and other experiences on my facebook page in the days to come. I am woefully behind in my postings but I assure you, the material has been recorded.
Late in the afternoon we have taken a taxi to the Baiyoke II – the CN Tower of Bangkok – its tallest building with a down-at-heel revolving promenade on top. It’s full of us turistas who have spent 200 baht( $7) for a look and a lousy drink on the 82nd floor. The sun sets over this extremely sprawling beautifully polluted city. The orange light cools rapidly to grey-blue and as the light from the relentless sun dims the pinpricks of light from the city flare and rise to add new linearity and geometry to the city below that descends from orange to grey and then to ivory black.
So back to Khaosan Road. We have to plead with a Tuk-tuk driver who doubles the rate because no one wants to drive all the way back downtown. Bangkok is both super-modern and ancient. It is a melange of ultra-poor and uber-rich. The ride back is kind of unworldly to a north-American. Such a tapestry of contrasts of light, activity, streetlife and functionality. It doesn’t parse to my mind at least. But I have to admit, it works for them. Back in Khaosan Road, the mecca of young, western tourists, we see a beggar couple – he is blind, singing sweetly to the tunes of a sort of boombox hung over his neck, he sometimes toggles through tunes, creating a weird mashup of unrecognizable songs – is he seeking the right vibe or is he taking a station break? We have seen this same couple miles away so we assume they have a set pattern of begging and we happen to have mirrored their map. I give him 20 Baht which apparently is significant because it occasions a profound thank you from his accomplice – an old woman who guides him through the throngs by holding his shoulder and thus instructing him to slow, speed, veer to starboard or port.
On our next night stumbling along Khaosan Road we have a completely different take. Is it familiarity, bad beer or does it change every night? In any case, we are on to the islands of south Thailand – eastern side. Will it be restful or just another scam. Guess. I am already there.
There are more tales from day 2 in Bangkok but these will be the stuff of future blogs.
Saibadee Kraph! (Good day from a male)
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