Bangkok in Motion

Arriving in Bangkok from Chengdu had none of the frantic blur of jetlag, nor the uneasy, swimming sense of displacement one feels when one hops too often from one anonymous city to the next on frequent business trips.  The change was radical, but only in the way happiness is a radical emotion, that love is a radical act.  From a frigid climate and equally impenetrable society, we moved into the Upsidedown: a place of total warmth, humor, and ease.  We entered Bangkok like sinking into a hot bath, smiling, disbelieving, and have had the same grins on our faces ever since.  We hit the ground running, and stayed in motion for days, on feet, on wheels, on waves.

Forget what you’ve heard: Bangkok traffic is not as bad as the traffic in Chengdu.  It’s bad – yes.  It’s more congested, definitely.  But this congestion prevents the kind of suicidal and utterly independent motion that taxis and cars and scooters and trucks in China grant themselves.  There are simply too many vehicles on the road in Bangkok, and with the possible exception of one utterly harrowing ride at apparently 85 miles an hour through oncoming traffic in a cab driven by a 14-year old, our experience with taxis was much like sitting on a bench near a highway: exhaust-choked, noisy, and totally motionless, with plenty of opportunities for people-watching.  From the dark plastic seats in back, we had ample time to melt against the windows and stare listlessly at shops crammed with golden Buddhas wrapped in plastic, little old ladies passing us by, travel agents, noodle shops, massage parlors and “massage” parlors, open-air meat grills, and, sadly, 7-11s on practically every street corner.  The streets are often ill-maintained and have the rumbling texture of cobblestones when one has the pleasure of moving.  Plants grow with vigorous indifference to the polluted air and erupt wildly from every nook where roots may catch: store awnings, cracks in the sidewalks, window ledges, gutters, plastic cups.  This vegetable force is part of the seedy splendour of Bangkok, a magnificent dinginess that is frightening in cold climates but excusable, even lovely, in places that are warm, like the creeping decrepitude of New Orleans, or the crumbling colors of Havana.  The greenery dangling in unexpected places underscores that this is a place that is alive.

One failed taxi destination left us stranded in a particularly floral and white-washed part of town, presumably skirting a business district, and we were given the chance to make use of another of Bangkok’s many modes of transportation, the motorcycle taxi.  Motorcycles and scooters in Thailand enjoy the ubiquity that the bicycle once had in China, and each red light sees a small army of riders assembled, mostly helmeted and in black, revving patiently in a windswept, grinning pack.  I half expect them to burst into choreographed song every time I see this.  The only reliable indicator that a motorcyclist may also be a willing and trustworthy taxi option is they wear a reflective orange vest when they are accepting riders.  Whether they are officially organized by some governing body or union, or whether men simply buy a vest when they want to make some extra cash, I’m not sure.  In any case, we hailed two of them and paid an inordinate amount of money (nearly a dollar and a half!!) to have them take us what turned out to be only a kilometer down the road.  It was wonderful, though, after the stuffy lurching of the taxicab, bound as it had been to silly rules like “lanes” and “direction of traffic.”  The motorcycles were free to move more or less at will through the streets, and did so, quickly, and I enjoyed the feeling of the hot day’s air throwing my hair around and bringing with it in great passing clamoring gusts the smells of street vendors cooking: steaming rice, roasting chickens, deep-frying fish, coconut milk, limes…  The street colors ripped past in an airy blur, and the cars melted into one dull beast, locked in traffic.  In moments, we were there, and I got off, feeling refreshed and full of the thrill any near-death experience affords.

Later that same day, a careful perusal of a series of maps and total determination on my part not to get back into a car led us to discover the insanely modern and entirely efficient train system, which is certainly the cubic zirconia of Bangkok’s public transportation, if not its most interesting.  By “train,” of course, I don’t mean a hot, rattling iron horse with wooden benches, chuffing smoke down beaten tracks.  I mean “train,” as in space-age monorail with simplistic color-coded maps made for the illiterate and directionally impaired, ergonomically designed interior handrails aligned for maximum passenger flow and comfort, and hissing star-trek-style door openings and closings that occur apparently without hinge or motor.  It’s efficient.  It’s there.  It’s what you take when you have to get to work and you don’t live near the river.

The river.  The Chao Phraya river – perhaps my favorite thing about Thailand, if you don’t count the people, the weather, the food, or the architecture.  Broader by several times than Portland’s Willamette and twisting through the center of much of the city like a filthy old silver snake, it embodies the ongoing balance Bangkok seems to be maintaining between its ancient history and its burgeoning status as an Asian haute-cultural superpower.  Five star hotels glitter along its banks, directly beside floating vegetable markets, rotting clapboard shanties, and the phallic spires of thousand-year-old wats.  The traffic on the river rivals that of the streets: beautifully weathered old longboats slice paths bearing small amounts of freight or pairs of tourists; designer speed boats blare past from time to time, leaving a frothy, dirtied wake; and best of all, up and down the river run the Chao Phraya express, the water ferries, bearing loads of commuters and the occasional travelers like us, stopping at floating terminals built like loading pens.  The drivers have assistants who signal with whistles: stop approaching, get ready – one whistle; you passed it!  back up! – two short whistles.  After lining up with the floating pier, the assistant leaps off and throws a simple looped line over a stake in the concrete.  He picks up the loop once the passengers have embarked and disembarked, and hops on again as the ferry roars off to the next pier.  I fell in love with these ferries immediately, the watery, messy, simplicity of them, the relative speed and the breeze and splash of them.  We rode them in early evening, and watched a red sun fall behind buildings old and new and disappear in a haze below.

Between cabs and bikes and trains and boats there are always the smaller, specific distances, as well as the greater, random stretches without destination – the strolls of discovery.  For these, we walked.  We walked a lot, actually, a pleasure in warm weather, surrounded by people for whom a smile is a simple as a breath.  I think our eyes are designed for walking, for the speed at which we travel on foot.  It is so much easier to see things when you walk, rather than struggle to discern shape from blur from the window of a moving vehicle.  I can close my eyes now and still see the incredible richness of images that flooded in those first few days of walking around Bangkok.  Temples – wats.  More impressive than photos can possibly describe, more ornate and geometric and pompous and strange, whole and composite and wondrous and vain.  Gold leaf and tiny shards of colored glass, assembled in the thousands, millions, into ever-larger and more significant patterns.  Humble offerings, brass bowls of water or oil, burning, candles dripping, ash falling from rosy sticks, shade from parasols, devotional hands clasped together, eyes shut, bowing, prayer.  Street scenes, tables laden with amulets, clay figurines of deities, plastic gilt likenesses of the king, the Buddha, Ganesh, wooden penises, plastic sandals, brass knuckles, guns, belts, sarongs, watches, lighters shaped like naked women or grenades or other dangerous things.  Food carts, frying fish, woks full of bubbling oil and the scent of it.  Plastic tubs full of chopped lemongrass, limes, banana leaves, raw shrimp, sausages, plastic sacks of rice and fruit and salads and sauce.  Jewelry.  Faces.  Signs.  The Thai script sometimes like keyholes and serpents, other times like the myth of writing, like what children scrawl when they want to pretend to write.  The sky – blue even on smoggy days, so unlike the chill grey bowl of Chengdu.  Small streetside shrines laden with garlands of yellow flowers, strands of white and pink blossoms, offerings of fruit. 

I stood, my hand shielding my eyes from the sun, and watched as two smartly dressed young business professionals marched down the sidewalk in sensible grey skirts and low heels, chatting in loud, busy tones about this or that aspect of work, probably.  They passed a shrine, and without a word, without missing a step in their so-modern strides, both held their palms together in the beautiful Thai gesture of greeting and respect, the wai, and then patted down their hair as if sprinkling it with floral water or receiving a small shower of blessings.  And then their conversation continued. 

*Bear with me – I can’t attach photos to my blog right now, but will as soon as technology and  time allow.

~ by knifemaker on January 15, 2008.