Bangkok has, dare I say it, cooled off in the last few days. I've made it to the BTS without sweat running down every part of my body, slept without a fan on, and took a warm shower. I also took advantage of killer wifi speeds and a functioning temperature for my brain and worked like crazy to wrap up a freelance job. For now, I am only working for PETA and that made today's adventure possible.
Today I went to the craziest mall I've ever seen and the oldest in Bangkok. It follows an architectural form that can only be described as being in a star ship. No daylight, narrow passages, a level dedicated to mobile phones and anything you can accessorize a phone with, and the required crowds clogging every walkway. I was clausterphobic before I even got into the doors, the BTS walkway directly into the second story of the mall was a long, haphazard line through the metal detectors on entry to the mall (none on the exit...). I was exhausted after searching the cell phone level for a camera store, and ready to give up entirely but the thought of having to ever set foot in this place again gave me the fortitude to push on and buy the greatest camera EVER. In my price range.
I made it 20 minutes out of the mall before assembling the parts and taking my first photos with the greedy enthusiasm of a lego set Christmas morning at 12-years-of-age.
Last night was another foray into the strange but without the lasting reward of fine photography. Aaron and I ventured out into the Bangkok night life to hear some visiting German DJs. The club, Levels, is on the 10th floor of the ALoft hotel on Soi 11, accessible only by elevator, and crammed with a cultural mix of twenty-somethings as diverse as they are united by a love of German techno. In other words, bizarre crowd.
The first area was an outdoor balcony tightly packed with the tightly packed into a men's uniform of fitted black tee-shirts and mini-dresses for the ladies that insinuated women don't really need to breathe.
Two DJs bounced behind a podium/booth as the two waitstaff at the bar fetched drink orders one slow pour at a time. I wandered through, Aaron and I occasionally yelling some lost comment into each other's ear and eventually giving up on any real communication. The second room was four times the size of the balcony, air conditioned and playing the worst top 40 club music possible. Dodging the enthusiastic fist-pumpers and butt-bouncers, we ducked down a well-lit tunnel to the third area. This room was by far the most interesting with a 30 foot wide swath of lights running from the wall behind a tall, dark, morose-looking German DJ playing decent music, and up the ceiling to end at the bar. The lights were all colors and complex patterns ran through the whole thing as inebriated Germans shrieked, danced, clapped, and generally drowned out the music with their adoration.
Spilling out into the street at 3am, Bangkok was raging on Soi 11 still with modified cut-open Volkswagon van bars doing a brisk business lit by tons of neon lights. Those without cars set up cheap two-person tables and folding chairs and proceeded to have an inpromptu bar on narrow sidewalks.
One of the aspects of Portland and the Northwest that I love most is the abundance of life. The piling up of verdancy on every sidewalk, plants on plants, and bounty everywhere. Thailand has taken that to the next level. With its population density and available resources, every nook and cranny of Thailand seems bursting with life. It's 24-7 in Bangkok. There's a market for every mark on the clock. Chinatown changes at least three times a day, each block of time a new Chinatown emerges. Portability of these shops involves such tools as large plastic buckets or a pre-built store on the side of a motorbike.
Buddhism teaches that everything in life is impermanent. This concept couldn't be better illustrated than by the most Buddhist country on the planet. It's always time to set up and take down, always time to eat, napping abounds in all situations and positions, and it never, ever stops.