The other day, when it wasn’t scorching hot in Bangkok, I decided to walk thru my temporary neighborhood in the Prawet / Ramkamhaeng area, as after all it’s by foot that one really gets a sense of what’s about.
Of course, I did not creep into the small alleys and eventually did end up on one of the main roads where motorized vehicles of all sizes covered far greater distances in 10 minutes than I did in my entire afternoon.
And I also came to the obvious conclusion, where there are no big business or shopping malls, walking isn’t really that popular. And those people who do walk are either crazy or crazy.
An old woman, with whitened skin and ill make-up, came up to me and smiled as she tried to tell me something in Thai. I did not understand what she said, but her hand motion made it pretty obvious that she was offering some more intimate business.
She is well know in this area, making “business offers” to farangs and selling papers with random numbers written on it to the locals as “lottery number predictions”.
A little further down a supposedly homeless man was emptying his bladder on the middle of the pavement. Ok, that happens in cities all around, but this guy had his pants still up and it was just gushing from everywhere. In the matter of fact, there was so much liquid it seemed like it was humanly impossible to actually cause such a torrent of water… if it wouldn’t have been disgusting it would’ve been fascinating. Maybe it was some sort of eccentric street performance art piece and there was a hose hidden somewhere, I don’t know. It was crazy nonetheless.
Later I saw a dog that looked like a pig… or maybe it was a pig that looked like a dog, I honestly don’t know. It had four legs, a weird nose, was brown-grayish and very — and I mean “very” — round, even as it just lay there on the floor. It was rather more disturbing than the peeing man.
And at a food stand a pet bird was chirping. The bird was, of course, held in a cage which is nothing unusual, but this cage was also inside a TV; they were playing a video recording of a caged bird.
I’ve seen a number of ambient/relaxation videos — crackling fireplace, underwater reef scenes, tropical waterfalls,… — but why would anyone want to watch a caged bird on TV? Isn’t staring into the old tubes depressing enough already? You gotta enhance the experience by watching a bird hop around in a too small cage for 120 minutes, rewind, and add another 120?
Now I know, it’s about companionship, for those who can’t have a real bird — a sort of “virtual pet” like the old, classic Tamagotchi but just with one on/off switch. But why not buy a (pirated) box-set of Jud Law or Nicole Kidman movies instead. They can be your “virtual companions” too, and your dreams will involve a lot less feathers.
I’ve also ended up walking a surprisingly big and well-kept pavement, where I only stumbled once, but there were no other pedestrians to witness that. But the nice pavement might just be a mirror of the surrounding business, mostly consisting of car dealerships — many selling wheels which are just out of reach — and huge “massage” clubs with no windows but big banners with portraits of Asian girls on the outside — selling dreams which are short-lived.
Eventually, even on a cool day in BKK, it did get rather hot and a reoccurring smell of burnt rubber (maybe from my shoe soles…?) did make walking feel like it’s not such a good idea. So I decided to take a little victory snack at the next 7-11 and scaled an overpass to get onto the other side of the street. (I know, having spent couple weeks in Kathmandu, I should be able to just skip across the street, while humming some happy tune. But traffic is a tad more organized and faster here in BKK.)
And then, lazy tourist as I were, I waved me a taxi, showed the driver the note with my home address written on it in Thai, and then was quite surprised by how long it actually took to get back home.
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