Short Story: Bangkok Is Falling Down

Short Story: Bangkok Is Falling Down

I stumbled out of Titanium bar around 1 am. The night had begun to spiral out of control having visited one too many bars as is customary on the Sukhumvit Road down Soi 22. It is one of my favourite cubby holes of the City - a pisshead’s Diagon Alley. Titanium bar is a different sort of seedy to my usual hangouts. A neon lit stainless steel hole in the wall boasting a walk-in freezer in which drunkards walk in and down endless different vodkas before crawling out. It is slightly more expensive than your typical Bangkok bar and for your extra baht, you get no character whatsoever. Good fun though.

I’ve been invited to a girl’s house for a night cap. Her name is Gin which in Thai means ‘to eat’; hilarious considering she hardly ever does. Instead she feeds on these green pills which when infused with water create a sort of vitamin sludge. We’ve been dating on and off. I am to her what the Thai’s would call Gi Gi or a ‘casual fling’ which I have no problem with. I could never ever be serious with a girl who refuses to eat without a straw.

I boisterously jump on the back of a motorbike taxi which soon speeds off into the night. With no helmet or leathers to speak of, drunk as a fart, I whimsically put my life in a strangers’ hands. This is something I’m now very used to doing having lived in this wild country for six months. I don’t even hold on any more. He weaves nimbly through the traffic and the twinkling lights of Bangkok whizz past us. Most of the street stalls, noodle bars and T shirt vendors have packed up leaving a murky trail of rubbish and cockroaches behind them. I notice there are more prostitutes around than normal and distinctly less sex tourists on the prowl. Traffic has begun to back up making it harder for my wily driver to manoeuvre, but this is nothing out of the ordinary. Traffic and Bangkok go hand in hand. There are an awful lot of police standing around with big guns looking sheepish. Meanwhile accompanying the customary chorus of beeping and abysmal pop music, there are faint whistles, horns shouting and the clicking of clackers getting louder and louder. All of a sudden, it dawns on me where we’re headed. We’re driving smack bang into the middle of the Red Shirt protest zone.

As we turn the corner onto Ratchatewi a sea of red comes into view. Thousands of Red Shirts jam-pack the street. My heart rate increases rapidly as we force our way through the crowds. Many of them turn and stare wondering what an earth this dumb Ferrung is doing in the middle of a protest way past his bed time. That’s most certainly what I was thinking. I sense that perhaps I am not welcome here but, as we slowly but surely part the hordes, it doesn’t take long to realise there is no animosity here. Far from a protest, this is more like a carnival. Everyone is dancing, singing and jumping on top of rusty vans and trucks. A few Red Shirts are shouting loudly through handheld speakerphones and their fellow red shirts chant with them, yelling back and forth. There are women holding their babies while sitting on the pavement eating rice and pork flanked by groups of shirtless men glugging on Chang beer. Children run around their feet with red bandanas tied around their heads. All generations are together sharing food, drink, conversation and a common purpose. Instead of looking uncomfortable, I say a big hello and give all I pass a big smile. My smiles and good will in typical Thai fashion are returned by all. We are waved through with energy and enthusiasm. I was welcomed and saluted. I love watching the world go by from the back of a bike, but this was something else. It was wonderful to be a part of it, if only for a short while.

That was 6 weeks ago. Officially 70 people have been killed and around 1,700 wounded. The same area that was once a street party is now a no man’s land laden with flaming tires and broken bamboo barricades. On Friday last week I disappeared to the school roof for a cigarette and watched in horror as plumes of smoke bellowed from the City. It was a disturbingly eerie feeling watching the violence safe in the comfort of Minburi knowing that in between Bangkok’s toast-rack of skyscrapers people were dying in the streets, and all so soon after I had been there waving from the back of a Honda Wave 150. That safe feeling did not last long. Only two days ago the army and police armed with shotguns and assault rifles lined the top of my street checking up on vehicles entering the city. A curfew had been announced for between 8pm and 6am that will last three whole days. The biggest, most infamous and prominent shopping mall in Bangkok Central World had been gutted by fire along with around 22 other buildings. More frightening is the fact that violence has spread to the north of the country. It is highly likely we have a full scale civil war on our hands. Bangkok we fear will never be the same again.

As I walked through Minburi market today picking up a few bits and bobs for the night-in forced upon me, there was such an odd tension in the air. No-one was smiling. I got the feeling everyone was beset with anxiety; a tension in people’s eyes so uncharacteristic of Thai people. What is going to happen to this beautiful country? I have to marvel at the Thai sense of humour. Almost every time I jump in a taxi I am asked the same question - “Silom, sir?!” (the epicenter of the troubles) followed by a wry smile.

Despite the bad feelings I harbour for the extremist Red Shirts who are as I type destroying a brilliant city of the world, despite the endless criticism the Thai Government should and will face for their handling of the crisis, I feel very weary that with all this bad press people will forget just what a wonderful place this is. The Thais are exceptional: resilient, welcoming, warm and happy.

Don’t get me wrong, there are endless facets of this country and its culture I can’t stand. Yes, there is zero customer service and nothing ever seems to get done which, being English, will never fail to get me riled up. If your internet connection goes down, instead of calling the net provider, they’ll just sit it out and munch on a pad Thai blissfully unaware that it might annoy a paying customer. You’ll get a sorry and a shrug, if that. Not long ago my friend rented a minibus to take a few of us back home from little Mae Sot on the border with Burma. Having travelled for roughly four hours, the driver decided to take a little break, this time next to his family home. “10 minutes” he muttered. Half an hour later and the man is enjoying a cold beverage and relaxing with the family, again blissfully unaware that he might be putting us out. The ‘Mai pen rii’ or ‘never mind’ attitude can be so unbelievably infuriating.

Not only that but sometimes I wonder whether Thais have any common sense at all. For example, in my initial week at school, we had one class with a number of absentees, all off sick with the flu. The school decided that to solve this epidemic they would shut down the air conditioning all morning, turning it back on in the afternoon. Now that is a sure-fire cutting edge way of securing a virus. All they ended up with was a bunch in white men including myself caked in sweat moaning between deep breaths. Another case in point, a number of Thai guys I’ve met out here have enormous tattoos all over their backs engraved by Sak Yant Masters. I was reading that these tattoos are supposedly powerful and protect you from evil spirits. It’s like a neo-buddhist spell following you everywhere. However, before you rush out and get one at Dixons there are certain rules one must adhere to for the tattoo to work and I, personally, suspect it might be a con. Decide for yourself.

‘You are not allowed to eat star-fruit, pumpkin or other gourd type vegetables’. Right.

‘You cannot eat at another’s wedding or funeral banquet.’ Of course not.

‘You must not sit on a ceramic urn’, which is an item of furniture very common to Thailand. Righty-ho!

‘Do not eat left-overs.’ There are an awful lot of food rules here.

‘Do not let a woman sit or lie on top of you.’ That rules out practically half of all the sexual positions...

‘You must must must not insult somebody’s mother.’ That’s the majority of womankind out then especially here in Thailand.

‘Do not commit adultery, drink or do drugs’. Adultery in Thailand is apparently as commonplace as yawning when fatigued. And they certainly know how to drink.

Despite how frustrating the occasional lack of common sense can be or the persistent answering of all problems with “never mind”, I feel very close to these people. This is not down to my own lack of common sense which most people close to me would certainly testify to, but because I feel welcome and above all appreciated. When I meet people, they take such a genuine interest in me and what I am doing in Thailand. I can now speak some basic Thai and that has made all the difference. Seeing a foreigner getting involved, speaking the language, eating Thai food - I can see the joy on their faces when I tell them what I love about their home and what I hate about mine. I lose count of the amount of times I have eaten in a restaurant and had numerous extra dishes brought over, simply for speaking some Thai and taking an interest. They are a very proud people, and they have so much to be proud about.

Anyway, trust me to pin the tail on a donkey and end up in a country on the brink of civil war! Please don’t worry about me, I am keeping safe and staying well out of trouble. All red items of clothing have been banished from my wardrobe including my balaclava you will be pleased to hear. It’s hard to know what will happen over the coming months. If this tension remains much longer I think I will have to say my goodbyes to Thailand. I came here because it was bustling, exciting and full of energy. I worry that this crisis might have sucked much of that energy away. It reminds me of an old holiday home my family and I used to visit in Devon. Every year after I was born we headed down to the South West of England to stay in a wonderful house called Ditch End. Beaches, boats, croissants and Cornish pasties, Cranche’s sweet shop, the Ferry Inn pub, the little Post Office shop at the top of the track, our own little motor-boat chugging across the water. It was the little things that made it a big success and in turn a massive part of our lives. At 16 years of age, on our sixteenth visit to Ditch End, all of a sudden, the boat was gone. So was the Post Office and the sweet shop. Much of the area was being dug up for redevelopment or whatever. It was not the same. Those little changes left a sour taste none of us could get rid of. However much it pained us all, we could never go back. It simply wasn’t the place we fell in love with.