Chatuchak surprise

In a corner of Chatuchak Park, this monument recognises two hundred years of friendship between Thailand and Mexico, Chile and Colombia. Below, another surprise (of a very different kind).  Look what I almost tripped over while jogging.

BKK street

The ghost tower is ready for its close-up

A primal scream from Bangkok’s collective unconscious: the towering vortex that is the Sathorn Unique has become the setting for a new Thai horror, “The Promise”.

The building is the most high profile of the cities “ghost towers,” never-completed reminders of the 1997 stock market crash that have dotted the city skylines for decades afterwards.

Towering conspicuously over one of the city’s busiest transport interchanges at Saphan Taksin, the brooding concrete shell of the Sathorn Unique has become a Bangkok urban legend and a magnet for graffiti artists and urban adventurers from around the world.

In new movie “The Promise” the tower is the scene of a teenage suicide pact. When one of the pair survives, and returns to the still-derelict building twenty years later, the ghost of her friend tries to see that she makes good on her promise…

Teutonic flair

Nothing speaks more to Bangkok’s open-mindeness than its latest culinary crush, haute German cuisine diner, Suhring. Yes, you read that right. In a city home to one of the world’s finest, and fieriest, cuisines, German food is the latest “in” thing. And franky, the restaurant does not disappoint. The meal we ate there was perhaps the best we had in the city: surprising, hearty yet delicate and recognisably German dishes served up with an interesting wine selection in a sprawling Sathorn villa surrounded by tropical greenery.

Infinity

The Infinity Spa on lower Silom Road wows with its Wes Anderson pale green lobby and then Kubrick-esque styrofoam-padded space cells above: the ultimate in stylish relaxation.

Taste of the tropics

Above, the salak or snakefruit, and below two herbal drinks at new cafe 103 on Chinatown’s Soi Nana. The blue concoction is a refreshing butterfly pea juice and the brown liquid is a drink made from the mathum, or bael fruit, a sour fruit about the size of an orange which is sometimes made into candies. Two families on a single Thornburi street have produced the mathum candies for generations.

Monochrome

Open House

The Open House bookstore is Bangkok’s newest buzzy retail concept. Atop the city’s most high-end retail space, the Central Embassy mall, it is a fittingly chic combination of bookstore, lounge and food court designed by the same architects who fitted Tokyo’s exquisite T-Site bookstore. At Open House, the concept is an interesting one. Beautiful art books (and an exhibition space) pull in the punters and the various food outlets scattered among the shelves ring the tills. It is beautifully executed, with comfy sofas and floor-to-ceiling windows giving dramatic views over the Ploenchit skyscrapers, almost like a tropical Fifth Avenue. The whole thing really speaks to Bangkok’s new confidence as a glamorous style destination.

I bought an interesting Japanese novella, The Transparent Labyrinth by Keiichiro Hirano, and had my eye on a cool inflatable bonsai for my new place only to be told it was for display only, not sale.

Concrete and chlorophyll

City wild

The ever-reliable Coconuts Bangkok site reports on attempts to put “Uncle Fatty,” a notoriously chubby suburban monkey, on a diet here.

Meanwhile, a restaurant has been busted serving endangered species to Chinese tourists. The Luang To To restaurant was found to be serving cobras, andangered soft shell turtles and pangolin meat to its guests. This follows on from the revelations of tiger meat being served in the city a few years ago.

Death by plastic

Of Bangkok’s environmental problems – a sinking water table, stinking canals, the clearing of the city’s trees – its choking addiction to plastic is one of the most visible. With its delicious culture of street food (where snacks are frequently served in styrofoam and/or double bagged) and in its plastic-happy 7-11s the city churns through a frightening amount of single-use plastics. Indeed, Thailand is one of the five South East Asian nations said to be responsible for 60% of all the plastic pollution in the world’s oceans.

Bangkok-based Norwegian photographer Ben Zander is seeking to raise awareness of the issue (as well as money to supply 7-11s with paper bags.) His project is a photo series called “Death by plastic” featuring Thai celebs (like the host of the Face Thailand here) posing against plastic pollution.

The pictures will be auctioned for the cause.

Deer tears

Artist Sakarin Krue-On explores the sad true story of the Schomburgk’s deer in his new exhibition at the Tang Gallery, “A Talebearer’s Tale”. The species once ranged throughout central Thailand until it was declared extinct in 1938. Today only one specimen survives, stuffed and mounted in the museum of natural history in Paris.

#BKKY

Bangkok youth talks about love, sex and identity in new documentary #BKKY.

Greetings from Planet Bangkok

  

Bangkapi-bound

I have spent the last two days on the canal boats zipping up and down the Khlong Saen Seap, one of Bangkok’s most quintessential experiences. You hop into the boats as they briefly moor then speed on again, conductors perched precariously along the sides and commuters – women in headscarves, local shoppers, gaggles of kids and office workers – dodging deathly splashback by raising plastic sheets at the sides of the boats. Along the way, you pass traditional waterside communities, brightly painted toy-town mosques and concrete walkways brightened with graffiti and bouganvilleas. At the end of the route is the Mall in Bangkapi, a vast shopping centre which I liked for its very local flavour (and thus non-tourist prices), wide range of shops, lavish food hall and – when I was there – fun, if cheesy, Avatar exhibition.

 

Bread and heartache

Holey is a stylish-looking artisanal bakery on Sukhumvit Soi 33. I had passed it earlier in the week, and waking up craving crusty European bread, I decided to make my way back. While googling for directions though, I turned up more than I had expected. First of all I was surprised to read that the hipster haven was an import from Bangladesh. In fact, the business is a refugee of sorts – having originally started in Dhaka it opened in Bangkok following a harrowing terrorist attack in 2016. ISIS-inspired militants had burst in, killing 20 customers (after torturing those who could not recite a passage from the Koran, including seven Japanese aid workers). I read this munching on my baguette in the cafe’s stylish and friendly Bangkok space, pondering what would have happened had I been in Dhaka that day. Why had a bread shop been a target? Was it simply a place where foreigners congregated, or was it more an scathing comment on the life of leisure enjoyed by expats in a country where few could afford 100 baht (or the equivalent) for a just-baked bread loaf?  The Bangkok bakery that day was certainly full of the fair and the moneyed, Phrom Phong beautiful people, Australian and European expats. And was I then “the enemy” too? Lots to chew over as I enjoyed my bread and butter.