Bangkok Contrast
There’s a Bangkok that is large and light and airy and spacious and clean and sparkling and quiet and unpopulated. It is somewhere where our taxi driver, who hails from a jasmine rice and chicken farm in the country, can not – he told us – afford to shop. We assured him we would not be shopping either – simply looking.
Just like we’ve done in the other temples we have visited, we wandered around snapping pictures in this one, The Temple to Consumerism, more famously known as Capital World, the largest shopping mall in South East Asia.
Shop after shop after shop – floor after floor after floor – big name brands, small exclusive boutiques, a couple of department stores and hundreds of eating establishments, not to mention cinemas and architecture displays. There was too much to fit in to the couple of hours we devoted to this shrine.
Outside this enormous monument is another shrine, where dedicated worshippers bow and make offerings. For us, coming from a well-and-truly so-called “secular” society, which hardly tolerates mention of religious matters other than sport or mall attendance, it is still novel to see such public expressions of faith. (It is particularly fascinating to watch shop owners climb up on stools and offer their morning prayers to an image on the wall, their hands pressed together in front of their foreheads. Some proceed to wave wads of money in front of their merchandise. It seems worlds apart from most Kiwis, but it occurs to us that the differences are only superficial.)
We wandered up the road…..how do you capture all that entails? Noise throbs from the bumper to bumper traffic, horns honk, whistles shriek…..buildings, old and new rise on either side…….a bridge crosses a canal…..a motorbike zips by, going against the traffic flow….powerlines drape across every vista…..beggars line the streets, hoping…..even the streets themselves are worthy of comment – here in the *fancy* part of Bangkok, the pavements are falling apart; they look like one long construction zone with no completion date in sight.
As I was saying, we wandered up the street to another massive shopping centre and were ushered inside by one of the ubiquitous uniformed whistle-blowers.
Inside was a different world to the Capital World we had just left behind. This was somewhere the taxi driver might have shopped. Certainly the rest of Bangkok’s ten million people seemed to be in there. They thronged along the rabbit-warren-like corridors, rubbing shoulders, accidentally stepping on toes, dragging huge bags behind them. The narrow aisles were cluttered with stalls selling every item of clothing from underwear to evening wear, school uniforms to shoes, logo-emblazoned t-shirts, jeans, jewellery, hair accessories, handbags, down-filled coats, balaclavas….if you can wear it, you could buy it there.
That was Downtown Bangkok. Tomorrow, back in our more-raw neck of the woods, we will take an afternoon stroll. Following any of our three (different) maps of Bangkok is harder than GPS-ing in Ipoh! One can stand at an intersection and be faced with six roads to choose from, but only three are on the maps – how to tell which three are missing isn’t simple when only one is marked with a name! The other main problem we would face is that there would be two roads with an identical name. This we would not discover until we’d be trying to work out HOW ON EARTH we could have ended up in the opposite direction from which we had apparently set out. Apart from an interesting walk past coffin makers, tyre suppliers, eateries (of course), sewing machine sellers, shrine sellers, hardware shops, signwriters, a BMW showroom (looking quite out of place!), scales distributors and other random shops and houses, it would be a memorable walk, because we would find a lady sitting on the pavement at her pedal-powered sewing machine. We’d zoomed past a few in a taxi, wishing we could stop and drag out the hole-in-M6’s-shorts-made-when-falling-over that we’d been carrying around for a week. This would be the time. Without a word of English, but with beaming smile behind her mask, chuckles at her audience and loud laughing words called out to neighbours, she set aside the jeans she was working on, found a thread that matched, pulled a scrap of fabric from a plastic bag (and it was not having a scrap of fabric that had prevented me from mending said shorts any earlier – I had the needle and thread, but hadn’t packed patches!) and started the machine whirring. Five minutes and 20 baht (NZ$1) later, they were ready to wear again. M6’s only other pair of shorts will get a much-needed wash!
designer fashions and mending on the side of the road
quiet canals and congested roads
highrises and lowlife
cars being dusted and rubbish everywhere in the streets
old and new
Bangkok = Contrast
Tags: craft, dress, justice, money, postcard: Thailand
rayres
Wow! What a contrast. It’s amazing, love the photos. You are all looking really well too. x
So pleased M6 had her shorts repaired 🙂 I enjoyed your shrine comparisons!
I agree, your photos are really special —- thank you for sharing.
I am enjoying my ARM-CHAIR travels through yur postings, what a trip, and yu have only left NZ 1 month ago. Stay safe.