Bangkok Streets

A typical Bangkok city street is certainly not as busy and glittery as a guidebook-recommended palace or temple, but it’s still rather fascinating to an outsider. To begin with, the majority of sidewalks are composed of cobblestones, but the city seems to have very little money dedicated to city upkeep, so there are loose cobblestones piled along the sidewalks every couple of feet. The many resulting dips and rises make it difficult to walk without watching your feet. However, when the traffic is particularly bad (which it often is), the motorbikes often jump up onto the sidewalk to ride around the cars. This makes the potholes even worse, and is scary for pedestrians! So while I watch the ground for missing cobblestones, I also have to keep an eye on the road in case the traffic decides to join me on the sidewalk. Somehow, Thais seem to have a sixth sense about this, and don’t watch either the ground or the traffic. They simply walk, and the holes and the motorbikes seem to part around them. I have not yet worked up the courage to attempt to walk like a Thai.

Another thing I have noticed on Bangkok’s streets is how haphazard everything is. Tiny food stalls are shoved anywhere they will fit. If you walk past a fallen down building or a few piles of garbage bags, you may come across a tiny restaurant terrace or a clothes market featuring knock-off Levis or more fallen down buildings and piles of garbage bags. Stray cats and dogs roam everywhere without collars, and like to emerge from the most unexpected of places, including from between moving moped wheels. Fences are thrown up here and there, often covered with barbed wire, but they don’t seem to mark territory and they don’t succeed in keeping much of anything in or out since most of them are full of holes. Wildlife seems to enjoy the food scraps tossed into most corners—in addition to dogs and cats, I have seen all kinds of birds, several lizards, and a huge rat. The rat, of course, was seen lurking outside my own apartment building. And it was huge. Really, really huge. Like a cat. Strangely, I have seen no squirrels and, luckily, no mosquitoes. I do, however, have a hot, red welt on my leg that appeared this morning, suggesting that Bangkok is home to spiders.

Another curious sight in Bangkok is the plethora of tuk-tuks and motorcycle taxis. Tuk-tuks are small three-wheeled vehicles with a roof and handrails and room for a few people to sit behind the driver. They remind me a little bit of golf carts. The typical motorcycle taxi features a driver, usually wearing a brightly covered vest advertising his profession, who hangs out with his motorcycle buddies on the sidewalks when not working, and who drives very, very fast to get through the obstacle course that is a Bangkok city street when he is working. Thais apparently trust these motorcycle drivers with their lives—they tend to ride along behind without helmets and without holding on to the driver. And women often ride sidesaddle! Since the Skytrain doesn’t reach everywhere in the city, I may need to ride one or the other of these contraptions at some point during my stay here. Someone would have to pay me a lot of Baht to convince me to ride the motorcycle instead of the tuk-tuk!