Days 40 and 41: Thursday, January 20th and Friday January 21st P1: Bangkok description
If you are wondering what happened to Wednesday, so am I. I think it was eaten up in the plane trip somehow. All I know for sure is that we left Dordrecht on Tuesday and it is Friday now.
I will run these two days into one blog because after I have described these wonderful surroundings in which we are currently luxuriating, I have one last story to tell and it runs over the two days.
This is my fourth trip to Bangkok and Roger’s second. From the very first time I was here, I have loved this city, so we knew it would be a great place to relax, unwind and get rid of much of our jetlag.
Many blog readers will know Bangkok well, but some not at all, so I will try to explain it as though I was seeing it for the first time. In saying that I love it, I am well aware that when I visit here, I have the ultimate benefit of living an ex-pat life for a few days. I am sure that if we had to go each night to a tiny little house or hotel room without air-conditioning and all the mod cons, I would feel far differently about the city.
Beth and Alan live now in the fourth different place in the ten or so years they have been here. All have been in much the same area of Bangkok – Sukhumwit. The streets here are numbered rather than named, so you will maybe get the picture if I say that they lived first in Sukhumwit Soi 33 ( 2 different apartments there), then Sukhumwit Soi 39 and now Sukhumwit Soi 16. This apartment is as beautiful as the other three – modern and elegant with beautiful timber features. The floor in this apartment is highly varnished timber – stunning!! I dare not think that it is probably teak from Thai forests.
The apartment is on the twelfth floor of a high rise block. It is one of the many high rise buildings in this area and one of the hundreds in Bangkok. There are beautiful views from every window, each one offering a different aspect of the city.
The gardens inside the walls of the apartment building offer a cool retreat from the tropical muggy heat. In the latter part of the day, children are often playing on the small lawn under the watchful eye of their nannies.
Now this is the part where I feel like royalty. If in Alan’s car which is driven up the drive of the apartment block by the driver, Panom, it has to go through a gateway which is opened by a man in uniform (they love uniforms over here). As the car goes through the gate, the uniformed man salutes! I just cannot help givinga royal sort of wave at that second – it just seems the natural thing to do! We had the same treatment today, when Panom dropped us off at Emporium, one of the large shopping centres. The entrance took us past Gucci, Dior etc and there too was a uniformed man who not only saluted as he opened the door for us but he also clicked his heels and stood to attention!!!
The other lovely luxury is having the services of B&A’s maid, Noi. She is a woman about my age and she told me yesterday that she leaves home at 6:30am to be here by 9am! Now that none of the children live here (all are at uni/school in Australia), and Beth spends a lot of her time in Melbourne, Noi really only has Alan to look after. She speaks English quite well and she cooks a mean lasagne. I think that over the years, Beth has educated her to cook European food very well. At Alan’s insistence, we gave Noi our considerable pile of washing to do. She would have ironed it too, except I couldn’t bring myself to expect her to iron it, so I asked her to just wash it and dry it for us. We found it when we got up thismorning, all neatly folded for us – what a joy not to have to take home dirty winter clothes.
Now once we reach the front of this apartment block, which I think is occupied entirely by ex-pats from a variety of countries, Bangkok is a very different scene. Side roads are narrow, with traffic of all sorts tearing up and down. Main roads are continuously clogged with an unbelievable volume of traffic. We have come from a proliferation of bicycles in Holland straight to an even greater proliferation of motor bikes in Bangkok. Add those to the cars, the taxis, the buses and the tuk-tuks (three wheeled motorised taxis), and it is a very scary experience to be on the roads, either driving or walking. The shot below shows what happens at traffic lights. As the cars queue up, waiting for the lights to change, the motor bikes come up one by one, to the front of the line. By the time the lights are green, there are usually about a hundred bikes ready to roar off ahead of the cars. It is really quite an experience to watch them and one which I love to photograph.
The motorbikes are a particular fascination to me. Few carry only one person. Often there are three or even more. Today we walked past a man who was putting his children on the bike with him - the girl about eight behind him and the little toddler on his knee. None of them wore helmets! It is common to see a young girl, dressed up for work, complete with stiletto heels sitting side saddle behind the rider. I have even seen a girl putting on her make-up as she rides along this way. They carry all sorts of goods on the motor bikes and on other trips I have grabbed some good shots. Today I saw a fellow who was obviously delivering wreaths to a funeral. He had two huge wreaths, about a metre in diametre, one over each shoulder. There he was weaving in and out of the cars.
Add to the obvious danger of being run over, the danger of the lack of footpath in some sections of side street and the large chunks of pathway that are either missing or coming away, and you nearly have the full idea of what it is to walk down the street. Now you need to add the noise, the smells, the heat and the sights and they complete the picture. The noise is usually that of the roaring traffic. The smells and the sights belong largely to the street vendors who sell all kinds of wares on the pavement – usually, but not necessarily always, on trestle tables. Much of this is food, which they cook on the portable stoves which they bring along too. They set up under umbrellas, plastic tables and chairs on the footpath. This is how many, many Thai people eat. Apparently what they can buy in this way is so cheap that it is not worth their while preparing their own meals. About now, at the end of the day, all these thousands of street vendors will be packing up their food, their stoves, their plastic bowls in which they wash the dishes, their tables, chairs and umbrellas and they will be loading them onto a hand wheeled cart or onto a cart which is pulled by a bicycle, to store them for the night. First thing tomorrow, they will be back in the same spot, doing it all again.
Something that is not in the mix this time are the dozens of mangy dogs which I have seen on other trips here. I think it must be that there has been an effort to get rid of them or at least not allow them around the street vendors. Beth – can you please fill me in on this?
Blog readers who are unfamiliar with Bangkok may think from my description that it is all shabby, dirty and not at all nice. Not so. There are plenty of large shopping complexes which, albeit very westernised, are just lovely to visit: cool, light and airy with many shops which are familiar to us, especially the food outlets such as Starbucks, Burger King and of course good old Maccas. They also have a good range of other stores including well-priced department stores and also the usual range of luxury stores which I only walk past.
Well it is past eleven pm now and I need to be up at 5am for our trip to the airport. I have no time to relate my tale of the last two days, so I will do so while we are waiting for the plane tomorrow. I will just whet your appetite for yet another of my stories by giving you the title:
A sad tale of scarves, jewellery, tuk tuks and motorbikes
Alternative title: And she says she teaches maths!
Now if that doesn’t make you tune in to my next blog, nothing will!
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