Bangkok denies me even that. I planned to stay four nights here, extended it another four, and then almost extended it again before I decided that understanding my experience of Bangkok would be a matter of months and years, not days and weeks. The city is too big, too varied, and far too disturbing for me to easily come to grips with.
To start with, there are three categories of pictures that I did not take in Bangkok:
1. Pictures of crowded markets
Although crowded street markets are a Bangkok staple, pulling out an expensive camera in the middle of one is just shouting for the pickpockets to gather. What's odd is that this is true in almost any large city, but only in Bangkok have I allowed it to deter me. There's an air of distrust that permeates Bangkok, and it's hard not get caught up in it.
2. Pictures of poor living areas
Don't be fooled by the pictures -- the skyscrapers that sprout up from Bangkok are all surrounded by poor tenements. One of the major characteristics of these areas is that you can't really tell where the homes end and the public streets begin. In the clearings there tend to be single room huts and lean-tos to sleep in, for which the clearing itself is the living area. Early one morning I turned a corner and saw about twenty taxi-cabs parked along the street with the drivers and their families all sleeping on blankets on the sidewalk next to the cabs.
In short, where the poor lived the entire areas were effectively private homes. I don't like to take pictures in people bedrooms without permission.
3. Pictures too disturbing to display
There are plenty of beggars in Bangkok, many with deformities far outside my normal experience. I had seen people missing legs and arms before, but never a man who had all of his fingers chopped off, or a woman who had to lift growths off her face to see. I had certainly never seen a man dressed in rags, with no legs, dragging himself up the middle of the sidewalk on a crowded street.
Here are some pictures I did take:
This is what it sounds like now.
There are certain noises I don't like to hear when I'm 88 stories in the air....
Unfortunately I never got to see them turned on.
If we were adhering to movie cliches, there would have to be an exciting motorcycle chase down these sidewalks, with people diving out of the way left and right.
The scary thing is, you probably wouldn't notice it if it happened.
It's like that *every day of the year* in Bangkok. I don't think I ever saw a dog get up while I was there.
The International Buffer is an absolutely fantastic value, and serves food from at least 10 countries, none of which are European or American.
It's obviously meant to be an Asian version of the Westin hotel chain, with a similar level of service. I wonder if Westin owns it? Or for that matter, if it owns Westin?
I didn't have much use for the hawkers this time around -- I have no place to send souvenirs, and I prefer to buy my food from someone I can find later if we need to discuss sell-by dates.
The entire drive and steering mechanism is a recovered car engine mounted on a pivot, with a propellor rod attached to drive shaft and a large pole welded to the other side for steering.
Unfortunately I couldn't find one who's driver was willing to let me have a go. Maybe next time.
Apparently the ground is soaked extensively with water in preparation, because the big tube just slowly sinks directly into the earth when the crane lowers it. For the last four or five feet, mud comes pouring up out of the center of the tube.
A smaller tube (wielded by the smaller crane in the lower right of the first picture) is used to excavate the earth from inside of the larger tube, using a claw like arrangement on its bottom end.
At this point I'm not sure exactly what happens. Either concrete is poured directly into the big tube, which is then removed, or the tube is removed after the earth has dried and concrete is poured then. Either way, the holes end up as the pilings for a new building.
