Suan Phak is a district in the west of the city, not far from Pinklao and the Chao Phrya River. Among the sleepy smiling masses there are three foreigners: the typist, his housemate, and a tattooed Goth girl of about 50 who has an eye twitch, leathery cigarette skin, and a small black dog none the wiser to his positioning on the spinning sphere. The typist and his housemate are both tall, handsome, immaculately presented, rich, stylish, charismatic, creative, selfless, well mannered, and well endowed. Or, the typist is short, pink, alcoholic, lazy, of oscillating mood and vicious temper whose hair is greying and showing the first signs of receding, and has herpes. His housemate is neither a saint nor a portrait and has medical issues and secrets best kept. Both ‘take to’ Facebook and Twitter when the world needs their opinion.
Gated communities are all the rage now and the typist and his housemate have guards and fences separating them from the shark-toothed dangers of the city streets. But Bangkok is one of the safest big cities in Asia according to those who choose to think this way, and the gated community here isn’t, you’d imagine, built for the same purpose as a similar project in, say, Mogadishu. Status and sex are probably the most important factors in determining the immediate surroundings of a desired abode here in the Land of Smiles. Status because humans like it and sex because humans procreate from it. And status because humans procreate from it and sex because humans like it. Security is down the list some, but yet the typist imagines a situation someday where we all live in gated communities and have wars between communities and where some communities become nuclear armed. See: countries.
Outside the gate and past the friendly security guard, past where the cobra lives, a pink taxi stops and the typist and his housemate clamber in, eager to get out of the debilitating April heat and into the air-con and shiny PVC upholstery. The small, grinning driver responds to the destination request with ridiculous high-pitched laughter which continues for the whole journey. He isn’t having it that two pink males could live in the district of Suan Phak, all alone with no other pink people. No way. The typist and his housemate conclude the driver to be stoned, and, by the time of arrival at the boat, quite annoying. Still, he means well and the ten kilometers cost only 95 baht and all in all Bangkok taxis get 4 out of 5 from 1 review.
Phan Fa to Ramkamhaeng along the Khlong San Saeb. Around 20 or so stops. The benches on the boat are about a ruler’s length off the floor and begin to hurt your ass after a few stops. The water in the Khlong is famous for its mineral content and both locals and foreigners can be seen filling bottles and drinking from it. The world’s biggest sea snake lives there. And wherever the heart of the city is the Khlong San Saeb can be seen as an artery leading to, from and through it. River life is alive and well in a poor capacity and the colourful shacks and collections of garbage which line the route are caught in the shadow of skyscrapers and banyan trees. The typist and his housemate get off at Pratunam. Their asses hurt and they decide to break the journey, but not like an egg.
Central World and then Siam Paragon. Bangkok is an unoriginal caricature of a dreamy and plagiarized self-image, sometimes. And without getting into that essay, the only point of note, not the wtf prices, not the haughty totty nor the one-at-a-time-stand-in-a-line bag shops, is the ubiquitous speaker sound of shoegaze cover songs which were never near to being good in the first place. To explain: a girl with a Norah Jones-type voice (the mind pictures a tall blond though, probably American, probably lives by the beach in Cali and has a golden Labrador she walks early in the morning as the waves crash in and her long hair flutters in the wind) is hired to sing a bunch of mediocre songs of recent acclaim which find their way into shopping centres across the world. SHOPPING CENTRE MUSIC. You’ve just been hypnotized.
The typist is a liar and on the mezzanine floor (the typist could take issue with the word mezzanine but he’s trying and failing to try to be nice these days) of Paragon there is an event. A kind of fair with booths and young salespeople who are over-dressed and beautiful. Each booth pictures a new condominium with ‘units’ for sale and every building looks like a million diamonds in the twilight. To slant the non-argument in favour of the biased typist and his cynical ways but without directly mentioning the non-argument, the names of the condos follow as such: The Elite Success, Elite Living; Pinnacle 97, Elite Address, and so forth.
In the city right now there is, or appears to be, an air, an aura, an expectation and a pervasive anticipation of wealth and the potential of the good life. Young couples can be seen everywhere planning their futures, planning their families and doing so in a way which holds faith in the system set out before them. The currency is strong, construction is rampant and unemployment low, corruption has been abolished and replaced by Krispy Kreme donuts, the political situation is perfect and normal and boom and bust cycles are curiously extinct and there’s a buoyancy and shine that you don’t find in Europe.
After 17 stops or so, the typist and his housemate climb onto the pier with the smell of minerals fresh in their senses, their legs numb and tail bones tortured. They walk into FBT Sports, the ultimate destination which took three hours to arrive at, climb the stairs to the sixtieth floor, look around, shake their heads, ask, leave, all inside three minutes. Outside the streets are quiet with the university on summer break, no white blouses or short black skirts for lecherous old men – who aren’t the typist or his housemate – to gawk at. A more somber and sober man in a yellow cab takes them to Ramkamhaeng Soi 42 and a restaurant called the Orchid. The building, called Kantary House, is a serviced apartment which used to have a view down over Rajamangala Stadium and the whole Bangkok skyline. Since the typist’s last visit a 30 storey structure has been built directly in front of it and the balconies facing the city no longer see sunlight.
The food is good. The service is good. The smiles are good. Bangkok is fun. Thailand is fun. Life is fun. Outside, on the main street, a guy dressed as a cop directs traffic. He’s been there for years and the typist knows him and finds it remarkable that he’s still there. The man is a lunatic: he’s completely detached from the mind he was born with and the one suitable for success as a human being in the 21st century. Everyone in the area knows him, and most importantly the cops know him. And they don’t mind him being there as ‘directing traffic’ is, in fact, a bit grandiose. In full truth he waves cars in the direction they were going anyway. He has a whistle, a hat, and a BMX which has been turned into a cop bike of sorts. There aren’t any flies on this guy.
