Life in the city or life in the country? Which would you choose? That’s the decision I will test later this year when I alight in Thailand for a long stay. Really long stay.
For long stretches of time, sometimes decades, cities can be fairly stagnant. I could throw the adjective “sleepy” at many places, including my current home base, Toronto and it would stick. Not anymore, it seems. Developers have been beating paths to city hall in Toronto for a couple of decades now and the pace seems to be rising. I can’t look anywhere out my condo windows and not see tower cranes. Doesn’t matter where you are in the city.
Bangkok has been under development siege for a couple of decades, too. Someone told me that at one point, the largest percentage of construction cranes in the entire world were located in the City of Angels. Or maybe it was only second to Dubai, that now festering pool of financial instability. Of course, Bangkok is studded with the corpses of abandoned tower and highway projects.
Those hyper-develpment conditions make downtown life a challenge, shall we say. At 7 a.m. (earlier in BKK), dump truck tailgates slam to loosen the last of a load, hydraulic shovels send shivers through the earth and foundation drills clang against gear sets to clean the bit and dive back into the muck. Give me some relief!
Thailand’s not exactly quiet as a church on Friday night. What with motor scooters, tuk tuks, garbage tucks, municipal repairs (cooler to work at night), fruit and vegetable pickups with loud speakers, drunken tourists, etc., it’s a challenge there too to find some peace.
Since I’ve spent little amounts of time in the Thai countryside, Isaan or northeastern Thailand, to be exact, I will only have tentative thoughts on country living. I’m not talking about village life, here. I’ve only passed through some villages. Mainly, I’ve bused/flown to big cities and towns, such as Chiang Mai, Pitsanoluk, Tak, Sukothai, Nakhon Ratchasima, Udon Thani, Khon Kaen, Surin, Buriram, Sisakhet, Ubon Ratchathani, Mukdahan and Nakhon Phanom. The first four are not in Isaan, actually, more northern than eastern.
Citywise, I’ve spent many months Bangkok at a time. This city is chaos in the extreme (although some Indian cities are even more screwed up apparently). This is why I like the place. Bangkok is a release from the burden of being forced to do the right thing, even when doing the wrong thing will not hurt a flea.
(Digression Alert! You are freed from the Big Brother shackles that punish someone for briefly blocking an empty bicycle lane to drop a friend off ; punishing a third taxi in a two-car streetside taxi stand that bothers no one; punishing second lane of cars turning northbound on a major street that used to be allowed but, you guessed it, interferes with no one; fining a bar $1,000 for allowing someone immediately outside the door to have a smoke; banning smoking on an outdoor patio if it has a roof but with all sides open; almost killing with fees and regulations a new initiative (that’s pretty much dead) to allow vendors to sell different kinds of food on an outdoor cart (before, the regs were so restrictive, you could only sell hotdogs) -- the list goes on. Digression ends . . .)
Bangkok, how I love thee. A typical day (in two parts):
1. The day dawns bright and sunny -- you knew that was coming -- although I’ll have to take the weather report’s word for that because me and dawn broke up a long time ago. Let’s say it’s 9 o’clock. It's 28 degrees Celsius. No hangover. Now begins the first of probably four showers. Warning! One only wants to open the fully light-blocking curtain a crack. The sun is brighter than bright. Believe me, flinging the curtain wide open will instantly fry your brain and send you spasm’ing to the floor. It hurts even when sober. The combined toilet and shower rooms are huge in Thailand. You could swing a cat in one and only mark one wall.
2. Okay, coffee and cigs beckon. But so does the shaded balcony. Love my balcony, as long as it’s not in direct sunlight. It’s about this time too that you might turn the a/c off and just have the floor fan running and sliding balcony doors open. First, check the air on the balcony. I don’t mind the heat, except in March and April and May. In my second apartment in Bangkok, on soi 22, Sukumvit, I had loads of choice for good coffee within 2 to 3 minutes’ walk. So I’d go either to the Thai vendor or foreigner-oriented cafe, with its nice shaded outdoor terrace. However, the Thai vendor’s espresso is 20 baht for a stiff single, the Parrot’s 110 baht for a double. There’s an hour or so covered.
3. Time to go back to the apartment with a takeout espresso and write or research. Then think about the day. No thinking allowed while drinking first couple of espressos, sometimes joining my friend Franki, a 70-year-old Italian (who looks fit and 55, see top photo) married to a 25-year-old northeastern Thai girl who sometimes visits the City of Angels to get away from the village. Eat? What? Where? When? In Thailand this is as complicated as life gets. (Okay, later I’ll introduce you to the other Thai life complication: Drink when? Where? What?)
4. Time to think about getting a nice, energizing noodle soup. I struck out on soups on the upper end of soi 22, which is at Sukhumvit Road, a favourite of tourists, and sometimes ended up going up to Washington Square (
see Google map) where there’s a selection of good food restaurants -- see Google map, the square just to the right of soi 22 at Sukhumvit) for western brekkie at foreigner owned restos there, usually the Silver Dollar. I really miss my soi 36 Sukhumvit apartment, with a grand choice of soup vendors, especially the alleyway leading to the Lady Gunn Apartments.
5. There’s a good Irish owned cafe/bar not 1 minute from my soi 22 serviced apartment. Franki, who I met in my last 10 days there, suggested it. I’d seen it before but the two small tables outside were often occupied by several blokes who seemed a little too weathered for my tastes. The place turned out to have a good variety of western and Thai food. I had a tasty chicken fried rice. Well, time for another espresso and back down to the little corner Thai coffee vendor. It’s perched right on the tip of a narrow little soi (side street, Sai Nam Thip) alongside a 7-11 and motorcycle taxi stand. Comfortable table and chairs (one set), nice young Thai couple run it and it’s a great people (ahem!) watching spot. Can I be blamed if 8 out of 10 pedestrians are girls?!?! Even had a few sit with us for a juice. Thais are not coffee drinkers, per se.
6. Back to the apartment for a shower, No. 2 and change of clothes. And check of blog and messages. Between noon to 2 p.m., the occasional SMS arrives and phone call. Darn, didn’t know it was getting close to decision time. What to do tonight and when and where. Some bar names being bandied about, with maybe an early start. OMG! 4 p.m.! That’s only two hours away! Better get some stuff done.
Okay, that’s long enough to be boring people. More in part 2.
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