Street of a thousand stories

The street of Charoen Krung is a colourful Bangkok tale. The “new road” is, ironically, the city’s oldest, built at the behest of European merchants who had set up shop in vast mansions by the river in the eighteenth century, surviving today as the former French and current Portuguese embassies. The road begins in Chinatown, skirting the grimy tangle of the Talad Noi, an area of winding alleyways lined with workshops selling machinery, hooks and engines. From here it proceeds down – although often choked in traffic – past traditional Chinese shophouses and backstreet Indian and Muslim communities to Saphan Taksin, under the shadow of the doomed Sathorn Unique “ghost tower” (scroll down) and the boat shaped Wat Yannawa. Along the way it takes in the looming proto-fascist Central Post Office, tourist hordes disgorged from the riverside hotels, sometimes dubious tailor and gems stores, local street markets and quiet backstreets lined with wooden houses and hanging orchids.

 

In the last few years, the area has become a locus for gentrification, adding another layer to its palimpset. There is incredible street art as a result of the Bukruk Street Art Festival and by the Warehouse30 development, galleries like Speedy Grandma and Soy Sauce Factory, and now bright hip little cafes like “Little Market” and (soon) flashy bar Tropical City.

The apex of this new buzz is the refurbishment of the old General Post office as the Thailand Design and Culture Centre, an impressive complex of libraries, exhibition spaces and a rooftop terrace offering an awe-inspiring up-close view of the building facade’s gargantuan 1938 original Garuda statue, looking out over the skyline. It is truly iconic, a new view of Bangkok as a tropical Gotham. I was wowed.

But the area is peppered with other, more low-key surprises – like this Vietnamese temple I never knew about, close to the Chinatown end, dating back to the nineteenth century and featuring a coop of sacred chickens under a bodi-sashed tree.

Or Harmonique, a restaurant in an old Chinese mansion entered through a gap in an ancient banyan tree.

Street art of Warehouse 30

I was eager to see the Warehouse 30 development, another “hipster park”, this time in reclaimed 1940s warehouses (hence the name) on Charoen Krung Soi 30. Here, leading Thai architect Duangrit Bunnag (from the Bunnag clan, an originally Persian family powerful in the country for centuries) is spearheading a cluster of restaurants, cafes, a plant store, a performance space and a documentary movie theatre, similar to the ChangChui deveopment which had impressed me earlier, but with a much more central location. Changchui has been popular since opening a few months earlier, can Bunnag’s track record (he developed the Jam Factory on the other side of the river) and location put him out in front? Unfortunately though the complex wasn’t quite ready when I went to visit. It was actually about to be opened to the public the following (ie, this) week.

Still though, I was able to take a stroll (one thing I have learned is that no-one in Thailand tries to stop you from wandering through construction sites!) and into the adjacent small alley, which I discovered to be covered in great street art from many of the city’s “big names” (Lolay, Alexface etc). Here, hot and bothered tourists were being hustled into tuktuks, exposing me to a crisis of divided loyalties – should I say something? In the end though, the stupidity of the tourist’s overheard questions lead me to the conclusion that they deserved to be ripped off…

  

BKK street

Greetings from Planet Bangkok

  

 

Garuda

Lording over the collection at the Bangkok Scuplture Center is this powerful copy of the 1938 garuda bust adorning the city’s former Central post office. The original can now be seen up-close from the newly opened roof garden of the new Thailand Design and Culture Centre in the restored building on Charoen Krung.

 

 

Bangkok street

  

Day 11am Si Phraya Quay

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.

Sleeping giant, Saphan Taksin

  

New and old in Chinatown

Chinatown is old Bangkok – winding “troks” (or alleyways), steamy markets, shirtless old granddads playing mahjong in open-fronted storehouses piled high with cooking oil or barrels or mechanical equipment. There are stretches of gun shops and record shops, the colourful Indian enclave of Phahurat, aging department stores, thieves markets and corpse-snatcher temples. And, now, there is also a nascent hipster scene.

Chinatown in the last few years has seen an unlikely rennaissance as the art gallery/dive-bar crowd hanging around some of the cooler spots in Bangrak  (think Speedy Grandma, JAM, Soy Sauce Factory) tentatively pushes North. Last year’s Bukruk street art festival focused on this area, and particularly the “Talad Noi”, a district of grimy spare parts stores, where concrete deco buildings painted blue, yellow and green house gleaming, oily piles of auto parts  – and now some of the city’s most striking artwork.

 

Nearby, little Soi Nana, an inconspicuous stretch of traditional shophouses around the corner from Hualamphong Train station has sprouted a couple of superlative bars, like “Tep” (serving yadong liquor, with nightly xylophone shows), fashion crowd shabby-chic favourite “Teens of Thailand” and “Number 23”, which blasts Nirvana, Weezer and Morrisey all night in a space decorated with Chinese lanterns and wall-hanging stethoscopes, with a trapdoor ceiling.

BKK street jungle

  

Bangkok: bold strokes

Freshly unveiled work from the Bukruk festival of street art in Bangkok around Chinatown and Bangrak. See all the pieces with the Bukruk google map here! 

Bangkok: Bukruk is back

Good news for Bangkok – the wonderful Bukruk street art event ( see coverage of the previous festival here) is coming back for January 2016, with various events and art works centred around the newly-hip Southern reaches of Chinatown.

More information on the 2016 festival here.

Buddhist grafitti

Street

Bangkok city streets.