This was planned before all these awful events. But nevertheless I would like you to see it. I do not think most people have any idea of what it is like...'to LIVE HERE' !! so here is a first go at this craziness
Since I started on this I have begun reading Bangkok:Place, Practice and Representation. Routledge. London.2002 by Marc Askew from Victoria University of Technology, Melbourne It is part of a series-Asia's Transformation: Asia's Global Cities edited by Mark Selden from Cornell U. While it contains chapters one does not rush to read because of their titles: eg. Fields of Cultural Capital...there are others which are the most pertinent to daily life in Bangkok that I have come across: Condo Land and Genealogy of the Slum..so what follows is at least in the spirit of inquiry!
Here is the star of the show..of course
We look rather different at dawn!
Never mind we have a garden and look.. a swimming pool...behind the trellis of wires!
In the morning we wander about on walks to look at geese, vernacular architecture, dead dolls and canals. In fact the morning walk is a veritable historical tour. Bangkapi is 'built' on a swamp-like much of Bangkok. We walk along a metre wide concrete path raised on stilts above the stinking black canal. There are little lanes leading off this path...some on stilts, some just wet walways through the reeds..but all along there are people living in houses of varying degrees of wealth. The whole issue of land tenure inThailand is unresolved. A curious mixture of title, patronage and squatters rights
Bangkok Pavements/Sidewalks are a hazard. The sideawalks are awash with stalls and the owners are usually either sleeping or eating as far as I can see. In this shot there is, unusually, no food being eaten. Here, it is by far and away cheaper to eat at a street food stall than to buy food and cook at home..with one or two eexceptions..a few grilled prawns will be cheaper at home...but other grilled things..chicken, chicken hearts, pork will be cheaper in the street and anyway they have been seasoned and prepared already....there is a litle book on Hawker Food somwewhere in the house. A basic dish with rice costs 35p ie 50c..twice a day you can eat and then a couple of bottles orf water..day's expenditure on food $1.25
Our animals enjoy the morning. The cat eyes the bird..and itself. The dog has a difficult experience with a zombie doll while the slow eyed loris is well just...slow
So into the world. Major pre-occupations aof Thai teens are Karaoke booths. Thailand's answer to Mullah Omar, who has almost singlehandedly wrecked the country's major source of income, ie. Tourism , tried to declare these cabinets de chansons entertainment venues and therefore entry only to over 21s. As 90 % of the clientele is 14 to 16 there were 'a few protests'. ...Beggars are already lining up at the new Tesco Lotus store..and oh! look at this nice waterway next door...The smell....well!
I have mentioned The Mall Bangkapi before. Here we have the major pre-occupations: Gold, Mobile Phones and Food
Off to Market
Crabs and fish a plenty
And all manner of shells and crustaceans
Here we have those essential staples Praraa..Fermented Fish and the pastes that are the basis of all the soups and curries. My favorite story about the great Alan Davidson editor of ? what is it called the Oxford Encyclopedia of Food is that his spell as Her Majesty's ambassadoer to Laos was notable for the fact that he produced an erudite tract on Fish Sauce..sounds true?
This little Piggy went to market. Ears are very popular.
Also little birds and frogs....you think we do not eat all this.?..of course we do
Nicely cooked crabs..of a sort..they ARE good..and silkworm larvae and grasshoppers..nicely fried, high in protein -also good- shame about the fertilisers in the rice fields and the fact thet were probably killed with insecticides
Chilis, Asparagus..Thai and English style...ie bamboo..Normai and Normai Farang ...CHEAP
Walking by the canal......? take a river taxi? We have one of the few still working canals. It takes 30-40 minutes to get downtown. I realise that I have truly reflected my experience of BKK by managing to avoid taking any pictures of traffic jams and smoggy sunsets which would be truly characteristic of BKK. I just try and avoid it all.. If I am going to sit in a jam to get to Tesco or Piggly Wiggly- no we do not have those- I might as well do it in London
Buddha and Muhammed seem to have come to a decent agreement about life here. The Wat and the Mosque sit side by side. The muslims appear to have snaffled the majority of the good canalside land, nd historically of course they were squatters
Cats, Dogs, etc relax of an evening.....particularly like the dog doing its (very good) impression of my step mother. K bought the mask one Loy Kratong evening and lo Betty came to stay. Mostly she stays propped up on a china cat by the mirror just to remind us.
Children try to end the day.!!
The Bangkok Night is with us. The VW van is a cocktail bar. The bars are go-gos ie. pole dancing in bikinis.This is not really about BKK nightlife which probably needs a little photo-essay of its own. There is some quite good stuff written about it: Jeremy Seabrook's In The Cities of The South and the expanded book version of the chapter on BKK, Peter Jackson and Nerida Cook's Genders and Sexualities in Modern Thailand. There is also some unpleasantly moralising social science such as Ryan Bishop and Lillian Robinson's Night Market: Sexual Cultures and The Thai Economic Miracle
Bangkok Hookers. They are mostly just kids from the rice fields. If they work the streets and bars, like these two, they are already a long way up the ladder from Burmese and Chinese girls sold into Thai brothels, who have a hard time paying off the tea money. The reason Bangkok has the reputation as the brothel of the world is because the Thais have made it so. Foreign sex travel though obviously there is miniscule by comparison with the domestic sex industry which ranges from mobile brothels in pick ups at country fairs through, establishments where the girls are chained up or locked in to huge 'massage parlours' and 'turkish baths' with maybe up to 400 working girls on the premises..all pretty much exclusively patronised by Thais. The sex tourism phenomenon is a direct result of the Thais deciding to provide R and R to the US military in the 60s. The US fleet still puts in regularly at Patong and Pattaya, where they may be anything up to 10 ships at a time laying off. Not a good time to be in town. How many Americans know this?
Whereas girls like these, working as bar tenders/hostesses will always choose their customers, get paid a living wage by the bar in the first place and are free to supplement their income or not. The economics of 'kai tua' or body selling in Thailand is simple. You work in a factory. You get 3000 Baht a month. A room costs from 800Baht a month up to rent . Working in a department store is not much better. If you want to sell mobile phones at 6000 Baht a month ie $150 you need to be a GRADUATE! One night a week with an American or European will net you anything from 4000 to 10,000 Baht a month and one night with a Japanese may well net you 5000 Baht without even having to sleep with any of them QED
