The drive from the airport to the centre of Bangkok, is via an elevated motorway, lined with billboards, billboards and more billboards, the sky is a light grey, heavy with moisture, not rain but humidity, which added to the grey of the concrete, the grey/silver of cars and minibuses gives the sense of entering a very grey city, up in the distance in the haze the blocks also appear grey.
Then when the taxi turns off the motorway, colour is everywhere! City taxis in red, blue, green, yellow...usually in combinations. Tuk tuks, that I have become so accustomed to in Colombo are everywhere, usually painted blue with elaborate designs worked into them. The sound not so much a tuk tuk, because they have all been converted to run on methanol as opposed to two stroke oil, and the locals call them ‘boom booms’ on account of the deeper engine sound. Buses look like US army jeeps, because that is what they are, or at least were, now converted into buses, chrome front grille, wheels, and blue bodywork with designs similar to that of the tuk tuks.
Streets are very busy and very clean, lined with trees, and Buddha Statues, sometimes in a glass case, standing guard on the entrance to shopping centres.
Overhead the metro system, concrete legs carry the trains above the traffic, sometimes to two levels, and a constant stream of people efficiently negotiate the network of stairs, bridges and walkways to be able to get to them without having to contend with the eight lanes of traffic below. The trains, completely obscured by advertising, glide along effortlessly over the slow moving traffic.
Heading into Silom District, the street scene takes on a ‘Blade Runner’ feel as buildings lining the street are buried beneath an array of air conditioning units, signs, and cables, that are everywhere strung between buildings across the side streets. White tower blocks pop up from behind the street edge, hotels, and residential towers, some with colourful balconies as though to try to brighten up the grey sky.
Along the street edge the pavement is shaded, protected by a green fabric sheet, that obscures any views of the traffic, market stalls line the way, with vendors selling anything with a designer name on, expertly crafted locally and sold for a fraction of the price. A turn to the left and the whole scene is magnified in a huge hot indoor market, stalls arranged so tightly that there is barely any room to walk between them, this place is huge, crumbling brick walls, corrugated asbestos sheet and very dirty roof lights resting on rusted iron trusses, and support columns barely visible behind all the market stalls, selling a rich variety of fruit, vegetables, spices, chillies...carcasses hang on meat hooks whilst below water can be seen gurgling below a cast iron grating in the ground giving off a slightly pungent smell suggesting that it is not rainwater. The concrete floor off the market is damp, is that humidity, or does the drain back up every now and again? Difficult to tell, all the while trading continues regardless.
From the 11th storey window of the hotel the city seems absolutely alive, the sounds of car horns, tuk tuks, and buses is muffled as the windows don't open in this air conditioned block. the sun makes its first appearance of the day, just a brief appearance as it drops beneath the cloud to cast silhouettes against the blocks. No towers in the park here, just towers planted on top of the historic fabric. Pockets of historic fabric are visible here and there, densely packed enclaves of timber framed, timber clad houses and shops with clay tiled roofs, threaded in among the trees, next to a forty something storey block. White towers, glass towers, some tall, others not so tall march across the urban plane as the tide of progress threatens to engulf the old city.
The next morning, met in the hotel lobby by a very enthusiastic tour guide it is off to the Golden Temple, with a compulsory visit to what I can only describe as a tourist trap. Outside identical minibuses line up, and groups of tourists are escorted into a kind of jewellery store, a women’s pearl market, with a side room where the men are deposited to drink Singha beer whilst the women make up their mind if they are going to buy anything. All around this octagonal space are aquariums or is it aquaria? No larger than what somebody who likes to keep tropical fish would have it their home, located behind the counters above the process of hard selling that is going on. In the aquaria, are angel fish, brightly coloured residents of coral reefs, and sharks! No word of a lie, two baby sharks about eighteen inches long, frantically trying to find a way out of a fish tank that can be no more than four feet long and two wide/deep. Maybe it is to remind the men that are patiently waiting, trying not to drink to much beer before lunchtime, that at least they can get out eventually.
Every visit to a place of interest is combined with somewhere that is geared to relieving tourists of their newly changed currency. Floating village combined with orchid farm. Heading out of the city Khlong Latmayom Floating Market we cross the river...and our tour guidetells us that there used to be crocodiles living in the river but now it is too polluted. The highway abruptly ends, concrete and tarmac become red dirt track, roadside cafes and car showrooms give way to coconut groves and paddy fields, to arrive at a red dirt parking lot with a neat line of minibuses, to board a boat, a long narrow boat like gondola with an old car engine and a long shaft with a propeller to make it work as a marine engine.
Zooming along the waterways we pass dwellings that are erected on the river, permanent dwellings, concrete base resting above the water on piles that are driven down through the river bed. There are the local population washing clothes, pots, pans cleaning their teeth in the water, the same water that we were previously told is too polluted for crocodiles.
At the market, as the name suggests the produce is sold from boats, the usual market produce fruit, spices, along with the obvious ‘stuff’ to sell to tourists, T shirts and souvenirs to tell you that you have been there. A brief visit to a floating restaurant, and it is back on the speed gondola past the houses, to the minibus. The journey back to the city involves a snake farm, just what we are expected to do with them I don’t know, stir fry one for dinner perhaps, take one home and keep it as a pet maybe, and finally a wood carving studio. All around the studio among the life size carvings of elephants, try fitting one of those in your suitcase, local people, men and women are seated on the floor carving tableaus depicting scenes usually comprising elephants and jungle, carved in integrate detail, using nothing but their legs to hold the carving steady whilst they work on them.
Back into the city, the first of many visits to the tailor shop in the shopping centre at the base of the hotel and all too quickly it is the taxi journey back to the airport, colours disappear and it is back to grey cars, grey sky and grey towers silhouetted against the afternoon sun, that is somewhere above the clouds.
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