Day 4 10am The troks of Charoen Krung

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Day 11am Si Phraya Quay

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At the ferry pier at Si Phraya where the riverside Portuguese Embassy, with its beautiful wall mural by street artist Vhils, faces off against the extravagant bronze menagerie of statue store “Asian Enterprises” with its nymphs and mermaids, lifesize bronze gorillas, mooses and hippopotami.

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Day 4 12.30 pm Cobra Queen Mother Shrine on Rama II

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I think I was a bit early, better to go in late afternoon. I didn’t see any snakes this time although I had a heart attack when a lizard slithered out of some foliage.





Day 4 2pm Rocket @ Sathorn Soi 12

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Western comfort food (and coffee!)





BKK street

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Day 4 7pm Goethe Institute

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While waiting for the “Blissfully Blind” performance to start at the nearby CityCity gallery, I stopped by the beautiful Goethe Institute. An important institution that is very active on the city’s cultural scene, it is also located in a lovely oasis-like campus centred around an old mansion in lush gardens with a swimming pool –  and bats.

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The Institute was promoting an upcoming concert by the albino classical pianist Chanakan Gam:





Day 4 8pm Blissfully Blind

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I had heard of a modern dance/performance art piece which happened to  be on while I was in town and decided to go to check it out: I’m so glad I did. “Blissfully Blind” by the B-Floor Theatre group is a work by Dujdao Vadhanapakorn, Thailand’s only psychiatrist specialising in dance therapy. Under her direction, a quartet of dancers performed on the theme: “Is it better to be blissfully blind or painfully aware?” This went on in and around a playground-like structure which pulsed with coloured light in an environment where the audience could move freely around through the performance, drifting to the two sides of the room at will, divided by the lighting structure. The choreography itself was strange, sometimes confrontational (angry eye contact with individual audience members), often opaque, but rarely less than compelling and the crowd of Bangkok art scenesters, with their black pants and assymetrical haircuts, seemed just as intrigued and confused as I was. It was a night of beauty and surprises.

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Bangkok disappointment

25 07 2017

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The quest for one of these puppy-shaped novelty puddings – which had recently set the Thai internet on fire – took me halfway across the city, on taxis, ferries and subway trains to a tiny hamlet on the edges of the ricefields in Pathum Thani – and ultimately failed. Wherever that shop was, I couldn’t find it 😦





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Bangkok: mixing business with pleasure

24 07 2017

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After a long and excited wait, I’m back in Bangkok. It feels like a while since I have been here, and of course, in the meantime the city has been spinning away at a furious rate, erecting new museums and leisure districts, razing old areas, unveiling new parks, sweeping up street vendors and – not least of all – constructing the condo tower where I have bought my own little slice of the city.

As always, the city is filled with surprises and superlative people-watching: a woman selling a live stingray in a plastic bag (for 1200 baht!), teenagers speaking Japanese with broad Singaporean accents in Siam Square, a hot pants-high heels-hijab combo on a shopper in MBK and an elderly Korean gentleman on the prowl in Soi Thaniya wearing an immaculate florid 1980s designer shirt with a loud toucan pattern.

Middle aged women, especially in the more rural outer suburbs, were still dressed in their black lace mourning gowns for the late King and the monks of course were draped in orange.

I also saw hot Latin boys at Chatuchak, a cute chunky guy in black shorty shorts and an apparition-like fruit peddlar with her face daubed in geisha-like sun protection. Plus: beautiful confused looking blondes at Patpong with annoying Scandinavian children, security guards with whistles and flashlights cycling through Lumpini Park at closing time, statuesque transgendered party people and a presentable-looking white hipster with a half-face tattoo sipping a beer and listening to house music.

I was also surprised by some of the city’s non-human residents: leaping kittens in bars (!) and in alleys, and a small cage on a footpath near my hotel. Inside it was a  fish head on a hook and (on closer inspection) a terrified shrew hiding in one corner.

Nonetheless, it felt good to be back to a city where life seems so electrically charged with the bizarre, the beautiful and the unpredictable. Bangkok is many things, but never mundane.

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I was in town on property-related business and so I stayed in Saphan Kwai, the northern neighbourhood where my condo was slowly taking shape. In the meantime, I had elected to stay in the “Nice Palace”, one of the dated, second-tier Thai hotels that I always like. I was happy there, waking up every morning to the sounds of frogs,  or looking out to evening lightning strikes or brilliant sunny skies, curtains fluttering in the breeze from the gardens below my balcony, a hidden world invisible from the street filled with huge old rain trees and tangled thickets alive with birds.

Ten minutes away Saphan Kwai buzzed with activity, gritty and vibrant: hawkers sold fruit, jasmine garlands and fried chicken, while amulet sellers and some of the city’s best street food were all in evidence on the walk to the skytrain along oil-splattered footpaths. One night walking home I heard a busker playing a clarinet – beautifully – outside a 7-11 next to the shrine where Chinese opera sometimes plays. In a dank arcade, a row of women sat at work on what looked like nineteenth century sewing machines.

Shops here sell Thai costumes for children, cheap clothes, old Buddha statues and benjarong and second hand books. The footpaths are awful, motorcycles speed out of secretive side alleys and there are cats and dogs lazing in the midday sun everywhere. It is a neighbourhood I can’t wait to get to know better.





Hotel

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Saphan Kwai

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Day 1 Ansell & Elliott cafe 11am

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Saphan Kwai hipster!





Day 1 12.20pm Baanai hotel

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Lunch at the Baanai Hotel, a restored 1920s mansion. I had hoped toot try khao chae – rice soaked in ice jasmine water – but as it was out of season I tried the cotton-fruit-and-dried-pork salad instead.

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Day 1 3.30pm Cafe Puritan

24 07 2017

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Blue paradise

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The butterfly pea is a kind of plant known for its deep blue flowers, used for centuries in Asia as a kind of food dye. It also produces a bright blue “tea” which dramatically changes colour if acid (in the form of lemon or lime juice) is added.





Day 1 Ari 5pm

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The gleaming new landmark of Ari’s Pearl Tower – a shape of things to come in the chic but currently largely residential area, famed for its cafes and leafy villas, but now being eyed by business execs?

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Day 1 10pm

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The art of Nakrob Moonmanas

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Tropical city

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