Friday, May 23, 2008

Bangkok

It’s raining like a bugger. Chubby, malevolent, monsoon-practised drops with floods on their evil little minds. The kind of raindrops the Matrix creators could only dream of. I mention this simply because I’m due to leave Bangkok for Hanoi in about 5 hours, and at this rate not even Buddha himself is going anywhere.

Here in the dining room of the Woraburi Resort/hotel (a type of outdoor, lanai type affair – a tropical-architecture structure constructed to allow air to circulate, and, assumedly, to cool its patrons), I’m drinking water (???), eating green curry and reading Hunter S Thompson. It is cool now – although no doubt ascribable to this god awful storm, rather than any ingenious design on the part of my hosts.

The place is full of the usual suspects: older European men with their Thai “wives,” girls who accompany these same gents for the period of their stay here in Bangkok, presumably for the purposes of guiding, translating and whatever else goes on behind closed hotel doors; waiters and waitresses rushing about with great steaming plates of rice and other Thai delights; a gang of middle eastern tourists who seem determined to get out and about despite the rain and the obviously curious looks of the locals. Their perseverance is met with success as a lone Tuk Tuk emerges out of the waterfall that is the atmosphere. Clambering in, they disappear into the afternoon mess that characterises this and every other South East Asian city.

The atmosphere here is decidedly cheerful. Dodgy 80s hits are playing on the sound system, and there is a strange kind of buzz. I can’t really put my finger on it, other than to speculate that the potential energy that has been stored up in the raindrops is releasing itself into me and the rest of my fellow diners.

I take this opportunity to remind myself of the purpose of this journey; to take photographs of foreign and otherwise exotic cultural artefacts and post them on my blog. Hmm. So far, not so good. Bangkok is not as photogenic as one might think. It’s well nigh impossible to get around, and the stuff I’ve seen on the Asian Food Channel seems not to actually exist.

And so, on to Hanoi, where I’m sure, I will find much in the ancient French Colonial architecture to record and be interested in.

I have made reservations at a guest house in the old quarter – an area whose name evokes, for me, visions of quaint coffee shops and even quainter locals. We shall see.

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