WHERE CLASSICAL SMASHES HEAD ON INTO CONTEMPORARY
One thing many love about the Thai capital is how so many aspects of original Bangkok co-exist side by with it’s globalize contemporariness. These juxtapositions stop Bangkok from becoming just another Asian megalopolis and remind visitors and locals alike why they fell in love with the city in the first place. Here’s a random sampling:
- It’s pure pleasure to shop for every local and imported fruit and vegetable imaginable at snazzy downtown food emporia such as Food Hall at Central or Gourmet Market at Paragon. Yet if you yearn for a glimpse of local produce in its original none shrink wrapped state, head for Pak Khlong Talaat, a decades-old wholesale market housed in ancient Chinese go downs on the Chao Phraya River near Wat Po. Open 24/7, it’s less frenetic during lazy afternoon when workers are picking chili peppers, snoozing in their individual stalls, offering incense to the many shrines and generally going about their lives. Long before the advent of fancy international coffee chains, there was kafae thung, a cheap and cheerful coffee concoction made by pouring water over grains in a cloth strainer and adding obscene amounts of sweetened condensed milk. Some of the multitudes of Thai coffee entrepreneurs whose stands dot the Bangkok landscape now use espresso machines instead of cloth filters. Either way, the resultant down-home brew stays true to its literally bittersweet origins.
- There are many huge fans of the cool, comfortable and reliable Sky train and MTR underground public transportation systems. Those non-air-conditioned green minibuses still careening around Bangkok streets belching smoke are a constant reminder of how much the city has progressed.
- Every downtown office building apartment complex and trendy neighborhood mini mall worth its salt now offers a fitness centre, often with specialized aerobics and Bikram hot yoga classes too. The many health conscious Bangkokians who can’t afford club membership fees ramp up their heart rates and sweat glands at free outdoor aerobics classes conducted in municipal parks or in the parking lots of supermarkets and government buildings. Under the setting sun and the blare of makeshift music, nobody cares about wearing name-brand exercise gear or executing flawless dance moves. They’re just enjoying the timeless and unpretentious Bangkok fun that modernity can’t surpass.
HAPPY FEET
Perambulating around Bangkok can take a toll on your feet. Fortunately, outlets for relieving foot stress are nearly as common as the uneven pavement itself. Priced to fit any budget, and inevitably cheaper than anything available in your home country, a relaxing foot massage will gently or hardily knead those toes and calves back to functionality. At the top end of the foot massage spectrum are treatments in any of the cities many hotel and stand-alone spas. Hair salon in up-market shopping malls dispense podiatric bliss on leatherette recliners with free cappuccino—you can even go so far as to request no-foam, if desired—and the latest fashion mags from overseas. Meanwhile mid-budget kneading is available at countless ordinary malls and shops throughout central Bangkok and, knowing a great business idea when they see one, even at Chatuchak Weekend Market. Traditional Thai masseurs who work on the second floors of the herb stores near the Grand Palace administer no-frill and highly effective massages in delightfully unpretentious communal settings. Your feet, we must say, will thank you.
THESE SIDEWALKS WEREN’T MADE FOR WALKING
With a panoply of pavement motifs in various states of repair, the city’s so-called sidewalks from a backdrop to a range of fascinating activities, none of which relate to locomotion. Once you transcend the western notion that sidewalks are for pedestrians, you begin to appreciate the Bangkok version as an endlessly mutating living theatre. An abbreviated list of things you might encounter includes several layers of advertising signboards, telephone booths that connect with nowhere, stairs to pedestrian overpasses, escalators to the Sky-train, hand-holding friends, usually females, perambulating very slow four abreast across the with of the pavement, motorbikes—if the street traffic is terrible or they want to drive against the direction of a one –way street—and, above all, vendors. Sidewalk vendors sell their wares from clothing racks, card tables, three-wheeled carts, squares of fabric, upturned plastic boxes and woven panniers, to name a few. On sale is food of every description; new and used clothing; shoes; handbags; jewelers; flowers, baskets; souvenirs; lottery tickets; music; electronics; and much more. For years the local government has tried to legislate against selling on the pavement. On Mondays, the only day a selling prohibition is strictly enforced, you can get a sense of how boring and lifeless Bangkok would be without its side-walk vendors.
NEVER MIND
Visitors are charmed by the Thais’ relaxed approach, epitomized by the oft-heard phrase mai pen rai or “never mind”. It’s an attitude that offers a refreshing alternative to the stresses and constraints of more pressurized societies. It suggests the carefree, optimistic nature of the Thais who do not ask for more from life than it can give. Do not brood over the past, but set out on course for a better future. Some even call it a warranty of a free and happy lifestyle. Yet there is another side to the expression; it can also surprise. Try observing, for example, that it could be dangerous to have five people riding on a moped, a common Bangkok sight, and you may be met by a well-meaning look, and the words: “You take life too seriously”.
CALLING IN HOMESICK
What do you miss most about Bangkok when you’re away? Cheap food, cheap drink and cheap movie ticket. That is, cheap food that’s almost always delicious and served pretty much an-where you care to be, cheap drink served in a cool bar on a hot day in the city, and cheap movie at plush theatres featuring the most comfortable, if not state-of-the-art, seat. Such essentials in life—yes, of course drink and movies are essential—are on offer at the lowest of costs in the Thai capital.
THE BENEFITS OF BEING FOREIGNER
In Bangkok the notion of service with a smile far eclipses the standard public relations patter about how Thais are so friendly and accommodating. Just about any place not specifically aimed at tourists is somewhere you can meet and ordinary Thai who’ll go out of his or her way to help you. Do watch out for touts with broad smiles and offers of assistance, who hung around tourist spots, though; sometimes they have hidden agendas. Spend any length of time in Bangkok and you’ll amass a book’s worth of tag-at-your-heartstrings experiences with ordinary Bangkokians, most of which would be unimaginable in the west. Ask a humble sidewalk shoe repairman for a bit of liquid glue to mend an expensive bracelet and there’s a good chance that, without hesitation, he’ll pour a hugs dollop into a small container and act genuinely offended if you try to pay him for his generosity. Chance upon the Chatuchak Weekend Market branch of the wonderful Doi Tung, a coffee shop run by the royal-sponsored Mae Fah Luang Foundation to discover that their brew is made from locally grown beans, tastes as good as anything available at all those international chains and costs less too. No-foam lattes with extra-hot milk—just try saying that in Thai—might not exactly be standard coffee fare in Bangkok so your order might take some explaining and gesticulating. Yet return a few week later and before you can utter “large latte”, don’t be surprised if the serve recites your order back to you perfectly. A stunning turn of events once you consider how many gazillion orders for caffeine probably filled since last you met
Resource: Sawasdee Magazine / April 2007
One thing many love about the Thai capital is how so many aspects of original Bangkok co-exist side by with it’s globalize contemporariness. These juxtapositions stop Bangkok from becoming just another Asian megalopolis and remind visitors and locals alike why they fell in love with the city in the first place. Here’s a random sampling:
- It’s pure pleasure to shop for every local and imported fruit and vegetable imaginable at snazzy downtown food emporia such as Food Hall at Central or Gourmet Market at Paragon. Yet if you yearn for a glimpse of local produce in its original none shrink wrapped state, head for Pak Khlong Talaat, a decades-old wholesale market housed in ancient Chinese go downs on the Chao Phraya River near Wat Po. Open 24/7, it’s less frenetic during lazy afternoon when workers are picking chili peppers, snoozing in their individual stalls, offering incense to the many shrines and generally going about their lives. Long before the advent of fancy international coffee chains, there was kafae thung, a cheap and cheerful coffee concoction made by pouring water over grains in a cloth strainer and adding obscene amounts of sweetened condensed milk. Some of the multitudes of Thai coffee entrepreneurs whose stands dot the Bangkok landscape now use espresso machines instead of cloth filters. Either way, the resultant down-home brew stays true to its literally bittersweet origins.
- There are many huge fans of the cool, comfortable and reliable Sky train and MTR underground public transportation systems. Those non-air-conditioned green minibuses still careening around Bangkok streets belching smoke are a constant reminder of how much the city has progressed.
- Every downtown office building apartment complex and trendy neighborhood mini mall worth its salt now offers a fitness centre, often with specialized aerobics and Bikram hot yoga classes too. The many health conscious Bangkokians who can’t afford club membership fees ramp up their heart rates and sweat glands at free outdoor aerobics classes conducted in municipal parks or in the parking lots of supermarkets and government buildings. Under the setting sun and the blare of makeshift music, nobody cares about wearing name-brand exercise gear or executing flawless dance moves. They’re just enjoying the timeless and unpretentious Bangkok fun that modernity can’t surpass.
HAPPY FEET
Perambulating around Bangkok can take a toll on your feet. Fortunately, outlets for relieving foot stress are nearly as common as the uneven pavement itself. Priced to fit any budget, and inevitably cheaper than anything available in your home country, a relaxing foot massage will gently or hardily knead those toes and calves back to functionality. At the top end of the foot massage spectrum are treatments in any of the cities many hotel and stand-alone spas. Hair salon in up-market shopping malls dispense podiatric bliss on leatherette recliners with free cappuccino—you can even go so far as to request no-foam, if desired—and the latest fashion mags from overseas. Meanwhile mid-budget kneading is available at countless ordinary malls and shops throughout central Bangkok and, knowing a great business idea when they see one, even at Chatuchak Weekend Market. Traditional Thai masseurs who work on the second floors of the herb stores near the Grand Palace administer no-frill and highly effective massages in delightfully unpretentious communal settings. Your feet, we must say, will thank you.
THESE SIDEWALKS WEREN’T MADE FOR WALKING
With a panoply of pavement motifs in various states of repair, the city’s so-called sidewalks from a backdrop to a range of fascinating activities, none of which relate to locomotion. Once you transcend the western notion that sidewalks are for pedestrians, you begin to appreciate the Bangkok version as an endlessly mutating living theatre. An abbreviated list of things you might encounter includes several layers of advertising signboards, telephone booths that connect with nowhere, stairs to pedestrian overpasses, escalators to the Sky-train, hand-holding friends, usually females, perambulating very slow four abreast across the with of the pavement, motorbikes—if the street traffic is terrible or they want to drive against the direction of a one –way street—and, above all, vendors. Sidewalk vendors sell their wares from clothing racks, card tables, three-wheeled carts, squares of fabric, upturned plastic boxes and woven panniers, to name a few. On sale is food of every description; new and used clothing; shoes; handbags; jewelers; flowers, baskets; souvenirs; lottery tickets; music; electronics; and much more. For years the local government has tried to legislate against selling on the pavement. On Mondays, the only day a selling prohibition is strictly enforced, you can get a sense of how boring and lifeless Bangkok would be without its side-walk vendors.
NEVER MIND
Visitors are charmed by the Thais’ relaxed approach, epitomized by the oft-heard phrase mai pen rai or “never mind”. It’s an attitude that offers a refreshing alternative to the stresses and constraints of more pressurized societies. It suggests the carefree, optimistic nature of the Thais who do not ask for more from life than it can give. Do not brood over the past, but set out on course for a better future. Some even call it a warranty of a free and happy lifestyle. Yet there is another side to the expression; it can also surprise. Try observing, for example, that it could be dangerous to have five people riding on a moped, a common Bangkok sight, and you may be met by a well-meaning look, and the words: “You take life too seriously”.
CALLING IN HOMESICK
What do you miss most about Bangkok when you’re away? Cheap food, cheap drink and cheap movie ticket. That is, cheap food that’s almost always delicious and served pretty much an-where you care to be, cheap drink served in a cool bar on a hot day in the city, and cheap movie at plush theatres featuring the most comfortable, if not state-of-the-art, seat. Such essentials in life—yes, of course drink and movies are essential—are on offer at the lowest of costs in the Thai capital.
THE BENEFITS OF BEING FOREIGNER
In Bangkok the notion of service with a smile far eclipses the standard public relations patter about how Thais are so friendly and accommodating. Just about any place not specifically aimed at tourists is somewhere you can meet and ordinary Thai who’ll go out of his or her way to help you. Do watch out for touts with broad smiles and offers of assistance, who hung around tourist spots, though; sometimes they have hidden agendas. Spend any length of time in Bangkok and you’ll amass a book’s worth of tag-at-your-heartstrings experiences with ordinary Bangkokians, most of which would be unimaginable in the west. Ask a humble sidewalk shoe repairman for a bit of liquid glue to mend an expensive bracelet and there’s a good chance that, without hesitation, he’ll pour a hugs dollop into a small container and act genuinely offended if you try to pay him for his generosity. Chance upon the Chatuchak Weekend Market branch of the wonderful Doi Tung, a coffee shop run by the royal-sponsored Mae Fah Luang Foundation to discover that their brew is made from locally grown beans, tastes as good as anything available at all those international chains and costs less too. No-foam lattes with extra-hot milk—just try saying that in Thai—might not exactly be standard coffee fare in Bangkok so your order might take some explaining and gesticulating. Yet return a few week later and before you can utter “large latte”, don’t be surprised if the serve recites your order back to you perfectly. A stunning turn of events once you consider how many gazillion orders for caffeine probably filled since last you met
Resource: Sawasdee Magazine / April 2007
No comments:
Post a Comment