Break Up

In Alaska, break up means a prelude to spring, when the river ice begins to thaw into big chunks and water starts to flow again. This used to often be a violent time when the water-born ice took out bridges, and a hopeful one that spawned the Nenana Ice Pool, when people would bet on the day and time that the ice would break.

I keep reminding myself that breaking up means change, motion, and renewal, and I've had do that a lot recently. My latest trip to Bangkok ended a 20-year love affair with that city and when I returned home, I began to separate myself from the Chinatown neighborhood where I have lived since 2004--with a hiatus of several years when I moved briefly back to Bangkok.

I believe that the day I stop changing my life in some significant manner is the day that I begin to die. Loss means a new beginning. Finding something new to love, to explore, to inhabit is a crucial process for me and I look for a chance to do that every few years. But it, up until now, has always been a matter of my own choice.

Leaving Chinatown became inevitable with my last rent increase but I was lucky to find a new spot to call my own in an area that is still relatively ungentrified, thanks to an old friend with a vacant guest room. Right now my days are schizoid ones--setting up a new space while dismantling the one in which I still live. The act of moving could easily be done in several journeys by taxi; the act of letting go is significantly more difficult. I tell myself I'm a quick 10-minute walk away from this place that I've loved. This is true but soon I won't be walking through a generous sprinkling of neon to get home at night.

Bangkok? I knew I'd find changes there on my first visit since the Junta took over but I had to see that for myself. Coups have come and gone in Thailand as a matter of routine in the past hundred years or so, but life on a daily level has gone unchanged. Not this time, not in Bangkok. Market by market, the city is being erased, and personal freedom is disappearing with it. It hurt me every day of the month that I was there, and for the first time ever I was happy to return to Hong Kong on my journey homeward.

I still can't write about the city that I've lost, not yet. Instead I focus on putting objects into bags, assembling furniture from Ikea at the new house, finding new facets of the neighborhood that will soon be mine.

It's Break Up time. Bridges will be broken, but not burned,

More Than I Can Say

                                  

For the first time in my life, I'm counting down the days before I leave Bangkok. The question of this week is which of us has changed the most?

It all began with the Skytrain and its comfortable, anonymous, rapid transit. Then came the MRT, with no sense of place at all. Now if you take a bus, or a riverboat, you can plainly see that Bangkok is being erased. A chaotic, wonderful, horizontal city is becoming a franchised, sterile, vertical one. When I saw the pseudo-colonial shopping mall (complete with Starbucks) that has replaced the dark sprawl of old ugly buildings that used to border Pak Khlong Talad's market, my heart splintered. 

Fifty new shopping malls are scheduled to be built in Bangkok over the next year. Since I arrived last month, at least two more market areas have been removed. Bring on the air-conditioned brave new world.

                               

Bangkok in an Altered State

               

I almost didn't buy a newspaper yesterday. This should-be-simple-activity involves a long bus or taxi ride to the skytrain, a frigid ride to Silom Complex, and a trip to the third floor of a place I used to enjoy but that is now just another pretentious shopping experience. However it's the closest place I know that carries the Bangkok Post, which is invisible in my neighborhood of Ratburana, so off I went, as I have almost every day since I arrived in this city. My bus was slow and I took pictures from its open window, realizing that what I was looking at will be gone in ten years or less. Old rice warehouses, small orchards, miles of streetfood vendors, all to be replaced by Bangkok progress--McDonalds, Starbucks, S&P.                  Two days earlier I was whipped into depression by the sight of empty sidewalks in the Nana neighborhood. I have had a love-hate relationship with that part of Sukhumvit ever since I first came to Bangkok. The sidewalks were always so clogged with vendors that shoppers and other pedestrians moved at a pace that a toddler would sneer at. But it was an area that was wildly alive, attracting people from all over the world with a spirited interaction between sellers and purchasers. Ugly it was, and the people who sold things there every day were certain to perish a painful, lingering death from the horrible, exhaust-laden air, but it was a perfect antidote to the sterility of the city's shopping malls. Now the sidewalk vendors were gone, replaced with clean little shops selling things like baby clothes. "The vendors come at seven o'clock now," an Indian tailor told me, and a long-time resident later said "Yes, they have three hours of selling time. They can stay until midnight but nobody shops there much past ten." So much of what made Bangkok a city that I loved was disappearing fast. Even the fruit carts that used to be everywhere were dwindling, replaced by people who sold little plastic bags of fruit chunks, held tightly shut by a rubber band to ferment in the heat. Earlier I'd stopped at a cart near the skytrain and watched the vendor cut pineapple into bite-sized pieces for me. The fruit was sweet and sharp, as it never is anywhere else but Thailand, and soon may be not even here. When the skytrain left me at Silom, I walked past franchised coffee stands and places that sold baked goods. Then I heard it--the clear, unmistakable music from a saxophone. For years I'd heard this music at this place, played by a man whose eyesight was badly impaired, if not completely gone. His saxophone had always been part of my landscape, until this time, when he seemed to have vanished. I hurried down the staircase to the sidewalk and there he was, playing in the same spot, with a white hand towel draped over his head to help ward off the heat. I watched him as my mood lightened. He is part of my history in this place and he is still here. I tucked 100 baht into his shirt pocket and moved up to the steps of the shopping mall to watch and listen. He stopped playing for a moment and picked up a handful of bills from a receptacle. They were all twenty baht notes and he separated my pink bill from those green ones. He looked off in my direction with his clouded eyes and began to play Doe, A Deer from the Sound of Music.                       A young woman walked by and put another pink bill in his fingers. Clearly he was part of many people's history, and that made me very happy. I stood and listened to a song that I usually detest, went back down the steps and slipped another pink banknote into his pocket, knowing that what he had given me over the years was worth more than I could ever pay.

Profile in Squeamishness

It is still there, waiting for the Rat Pack to fill its torn white naugahyde banquettes, pull the potted plants from the stage, and croon into a microphone.

In 1968 you could get an ultra-modern room there for 16.00. It had a swimming pool and a tourist shopping arcade. At 13.26 meters, the pool was the largest in Bangkok then. In 2006 it was photographed, still elegant, as is the hotel, although it needs a lot of TLC at this point as it approaches its half-century mark.

Lady Liberty still lifts her lamp by the golden door (okay it's not golden but oh well). The lobby is big enough to double as a ballroom with gigantic portholes in the wall that separates the restrooms from the reception area. The staircase is early industrial chic, imposing and metal among the profusion of wood that trims its surroundings.

The coffee shop/dining room is cavernous and the tables and chairs are solid hardwood, weighty in classic 1960s style. Banquettes large enough to hold a dozen people easily sweep in horseshoe shapes against the wall. It's the sort of room that makes you want to order a martini and a pack of Lucky Strikes. Rumor has it that the Khmer Rouge filled it during the 80s when they came to do business in Bangkok. It seems as though that was probably true as I sit there now with a good friend, drinking Heineken that has a faint aftertaste of Scotch. We both can taste it, a ghostly flavor but very distinct.

The waiter shoos us off before 10 pm in a kindly fashion and I approach the reception clerk, asking how much it would be to stay here. A room is over 20 USD a night and hovers around 540 US for a month. I say that's too much and she asks me if I would like to look at one of the rooms.

My friend and I crowd into the world's tiniest elevator with a staff member who might have been a bellboy in former times. The elevator just barely contains the three of us but manages to take us to the fifth floor.

The room we are shown is huge--quite possibly the size of the condo I'm staying in now. There is a deep bathtub and a lot of wooden drawers and doors on one wall. They look fragile and I gasp when my friend tries to open one, without success but also without breaking it. A big window looks out toward the lights of Pradiphat Road and a bottle of Mekong waits with two glasses beside the double bed.

It is a room with history and I want to stay there when I return to Bangkok. Actually I wish I could stay there right this minute. It's in one of my favorite parts of the city, a place where a shop still sells both the NYT and the Bangkok Post, where Abu Ibrahim still flourishes under the hospitable ownership of a man from Bombay, and food and fresh flowers are always for sale on the street. Next year...if I can wait that long.

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I don't know why I have to set up little dares for myself, but I always have. "Dare you to walk on the underpinninngs of that bridge." "Dare you to have that extra shot of Scotch." "Dare you to live in Thailand." For a girl/woman/old broad who is bookish and unathletic to the extreme, this weird penchant for self-challenges seems completely out of character, even to me.

The Liberty Garden Hotel became one of those little dares this week. I'd been there a couple of times for post-dinner beer with my friend Don and we both were intrigued by its aura of decay and past elegance. It's in a neighborhood that is vibrant and unchanged over the past twenty years, which is unusual in present-day, rapidly transforming Bangkok, and that's why I decided I needed a night at the Liberty.

I had looked at one of the rooms, which at night after two beers, seemed romantically decrepit. Don pointed out the wifi password painted on the wall of the hallway---Ninja1234. It was all very noir and charming so I went back a couple of days later to reserve and prepay for a room.

I should have asked to look at it in daylight. Certainly the outer courtyard and the hotel lobby both looked vastly different when not softened by nightfall and a little tinge of disquiet began to color thoughts of this excursion. But I had dared myself, with a small caveat--"If there are bedbugs, you can always get a taxi back to the condo by the river."

Yesterday I was in the Liberty's miniscule elevator with the bellboy. The gaping hole in the wood veneer of its wall seemed less atmospheric and more creepy than it had when I had been in the elevator with both the bellboy and Don a week earlier. I entered a room and immediately smelled the odor of very old bedding. The window was large and overlooked the swimming pool. As I walked over and looked at it, I wished immediately for another view. The pool was lacking many tiles that gave it a diseased and blackened appearance in the spots where it wasn't blue. It was completely vacant and that wasn't surprising at all.

When the bellboy left, I peeled back the bottom sheet to examine the mattress. It was so mottled with spots that it was impossible to see if any of them had been left by bedbugs. The pillows were similarly ancient in appearance, but the bed linens looked fine. I went to the windows; both were old casement windows that opened outward and both were open. I could only close one of them.

"The window in my room won't close. I want another room," I told the desk clerk. She looked at me blankly. "The window won't close. There will be mosquitoes."

"We have no mosquitoes," she said and I tried not to snort. "My room is right above the swimming pool. Of course there will be mosquitoes."

She shrugged and beckoned for the bellboy. Together we went back up to the sixth floor where he tugged the window shut. He left in an eloquent silence and I sat on one of the heavy wooden chairs, looking at where I would spend the night. The floor was clean, when I went into the bathroom, it was clean. I'd stayed in places before that were as old as this room. But only in this room did I feel that it was very hard to breathe.

I picked up the bag I'd filled with everything I needed for a night away from Ratburana and walked into the hall. I left the key at the reception desk, saying, "I'm going out." Then I walked back to the skytrain and began my trip back to the world of Chapter One, Modern Dutch.

Sometimes dares aren't going to be taken. There was something in that room, in that hotel that wasn't for me. I'm going to chalk it up to the stale odor that greeted me when I walked in and the knowledge that the glow of the swimming pool at night would be much more Blue Velvet than I care to look at.

Sketchy

Here's why most people wouldn't want to travel with me--this is how I like to spend a day in Bangkok--made friends with a little cat while drinking a blended lime drink and picking my way through a dish I dislike but apparently managed to order anyway. Clarified matters and made friends with the people who own the food stall. Booked a room in a Bangkok hotel with a colorful history for one night next week. Walked a lot. Ate fantastic noodles with green curry (kanom jeen nom ya) at another street stall. Bought a huge bundle of roses from an old man without bargaining, came home and ineptly arranged them in a big glass salad bowl. Now kicking back with a beer and some salted nuts, ready to read. Not exciting but really nice.

It is a Puzzlement...

Starbucks at Senafest on Charoen Nakhorn has a pastry called Spelt Charcoal Raisin Walnut. No, I wasn't tempted but I am curious. Spelt I know about. Charcoal? (It is black.) Explain, somebody?

Nothing kicks off a morning like having a 36-hour-old manicure peel away from your fingernails in chunks. Unfortunately incompletely--I'd console myself by saying it looks punk but I'm in a country that's never embraced that aesthetic. No soi to my condo, a boulevard of trees instead. Right or wrong? (Please discuss.)

Things I've Noticed Since Returning to Bangkok--

1. It is impossible to buy a Bangkok Post in most areas of the city unless you go to a shopping mall or grab one of the very few that are delivered to Faster Books at a skytrain station. Hello, Single Portal.
2. English in general is worse than ever in its written form. Seen yesterday on a sign "Thailand got's talent." Hello, ASEAN.
3. There's a lot more made-in-China stuff for sale in cheap markets. Hello, inflation.
4. Although Thai fruit is incomparable, Korean fruit is chic. Hello Paragon, Emporium, Em Quartier.
5. Thai people are still wonderfully kind. Hello Skytrain passengers who give your seats to the elderly (including me--thank you!) Hello bus conductresses who are much nicer than they ever were when I was young.
6. Despite regulation, Bangkok still does what it always has. Hello vendors on the newly-emptied Silom Road, who put their goods on the ledges of buildings during lunch-time rush hours.
7. Food is still a paramount occupation. Hello tables on the sidewalks at 5 pm--I have missed you more than I can say. 

Taste of India

I love bright colors, sparkle, and glitter, so for me the Indian district in Bangkok is a visual buffet. There is no such thing as restraint in the Pahurat fabric market. Colors blaze, and even in the dark hallways behind the main streets, my eyes began to cry for sunglasses. 

Photographs wouldn't show the extravagance that is in every corner--the sequins, the gold thread, the scarlets and turquoises and lemon yellows. Eventually I was so dazzled that I had to leave; I was veering on the state that used to affect British spinsters in Venice, a dizzied disorientation bordering on sexual ecstasy. It's a hallucinogenic place that makes me wonder how I would ever absorb a trip to India.

The ramshackle buildings shelter a splendid Sikh temple, whose white and gilt spires and dome are radiant above a cluster of dingy rooftops. Sometimes the gates to the temple are open, as they were yesterday, and the immaculate cleanliness of its entry halls are stunning against the dirt of the surrounding streets.

Over the past twenty years, there has been one notable change, the Indian Emporium, a very small (by Bangkok standards) shopping mall. I refused to go in for a long time, but when I did, I went again and again. The fabric in that place makes it a textile art gallery.

My new neighborhood is very close to Pahurat and the bus I have found and use daily takes me there in minutes. It's always been my dream to live near this place and this is one reason why I don't want to leave Bangkok during this visit. I may never see it this way again.The riverside nearby has a mall; huge gaping construction sites are walled off on a neighboring arterial. The Pahurat area rests on prime real estate, and at least one new building is going in on Chakraphet Road, near the temple and the Indian Emporium.

But for now, dirt and clutter and color all reign in a way that, as Kipling said in Just-So Stories, "blaze in more than Oriental splendor." My eyes feed on these things and my spirit is nourished by their crazed contrasts. Cameras don't catch this. You'll just have to take my word for it.

Looking Back on a Bus

This is the fifth morning in my Bangkok home and I use the word Bangkok in its loosest sense, which is not a bad thing. I wanted to stay in a spot with no memories attached, which proves difficult since I taught all over this city for years. My little condo is within spitting distance of a bank HQ where I spent a lot of my time. Unfortunately my memories don't include what bus I took to get there from Bangkok. I do remember that it carried me far enough away from the river that I then had to take a motorcycle taxi to get me back to Kasikorn Bank HQ. Now I take taxis to get me to and from the skytrain to the tune of 200 baht a day roundtrip and an hour each way by train and taxi to Dasa Books and other places I love. I look back on the days when the skytrain was almost empty--too expensive for many Bangkok residents and less useful than taxis for others. Now the train is often as crowded as Bangkok buses used to be, without the conductresses who bullied people into taking up as little space as possible. I miss those little dictators. I took a bus yesterday, one that I used to sit on regularly, the 117 that runs from Nonthaburi to Huay Kwang. I knew it would take me back to my old neighborhood and I steeled myself for that. I'd forgotten that it also ran through the area where I first taught in 1995. Bang Po used to be a lumber town and the girls I taught were the daughters of an affluent sawmill magnate. Pracharat Sai Neung was a street that was filled with the raw, sweet odor of freshly cut wood and the market had many stalls where men made dollhouse furniture from scraps of lumber. For years I had a tiny chest of drawers whose drawers opened and closed smoothly. One entrepreneur made Thai alphabet letters and I bought them all for tactile learning. The 7-11 was the only retail game with any claim to sophistication--it sold bottles of Johnny Walker Blue, which I couldn't afford. Now this street has at least one sushi joint, a place called Chic Burger, and a lumberyard that proclaims a Passion for Wood. I gaped, a Rip Van Winkle on an ordinary bus--no aircon, no fare. I got off at Saphan Kwaii, immersed in more memories than I could handle. But this part of the city is unchanged and that was just what I wanted to see. Food lined the sidewalk, along with fresh flowers. Fabric shops and drugstores filled the opposite border. I didn't find the Bangkok I was looking for but I found a garland of jasmine, rose, and chumpee (don't know what this is in English but it is so fragrant that I bought a small posy of it contained in a cone of banana leaf and sniffed at it all the way home.) The vibrancy of Saphan Kwaii has always invigorated me and I left it knowing I was back in the place that I love. For a minute or fifteen I was far from the Starbucks that is eating this metropolis, even the riverbanks, and the ostentatious shopping palaces that I detest and that take up more and more of Bangkok's space. Next time I'm staying there. This time I'm wrapped in emptiness, which is a state that carries no memories at all for me in this city.

Where I Hang My Hat This Month

There are over thirty stories in the building that I'm living in this month and there are two others of the same size in the Chapter One compound. One of them directly faces the two wall-to-ceilng windows that bring light into my place, which feels peculiar. Luckily I may be the only inhabitant who opens my draperies when I'm home.

The apartment door leads into a space large enough for a loveseat (Ikea Ektorp) and a big TV which sits on a built-in shelf unit, and a desk/dressing table. A glass wall with sliding doors separates this from the bedroom, which has just enough room for a double bed and two night stands. It also has a built-in closet with an ample supply of drawers. The kitchen holds a table for two that is too small for the pair of place mats that rest on it, and a long kitchen counter with a sink, drainboard, and a microwave. The bathroom is just off the kitchen and is in direct line with the glass wall, whose Roman shade remains drawn most of the time. In Thai fashion, there is a shower only with no tub. There is a shower curtain, which used to be an unusual Bangkok apartment feature.

If I sit on my bed or walk out onto the narrow shelf that poses as a balcony, I can see the river and part of the city skyline. If I turn to the opposite direction, I see buildings that are low enough to allow a full look at the sky. Sometimes a scrap of cerise sunset shows up between the gap between the two facing towers.

In none of my Bangkok years have I ever had a view of the river and I've always wanted that. This complex has built a little park on the riverbank, with benches and two outdoor swimming pools. There are trees scattered about in it and little pockets of lawn bordered by carefully manicured hedges. A ferry for the complex's private use is moored at the end of a small pier and a rusty freighter keeps this tidy little craft company.

The entrance to Chapter One, as this place is called, is a double boulevard lined with trees. Under the towers are cozy little blue houses with peaked roofs and white dormer windows. The base of the towers is also painted blue and white, with shops, restaurants of sorts, laundries, and of course beauty shops and a massage spot. The theme is Modern Dutch and three pretty little white windmills sit in the park.

It is extremely quiet although below me are areas for children to play in, and there are no stray dogs anywhere. A little blue house shelters security guards at the entrance and there is an army of cleaning ladies, mopping and polishing in true Dutch fashion. It's comfortable and charming out in the middle of nowhere, a fine place to visit but I could never live here. It 's too far removed from the clutter and chaos that makes me love Bangkok.