We get out of the plane. New house. It is hot and threatens rain. The monsoon is inclement and places bricks by clouds at this time of the year. We took a taxi at the airport and returned to Langsuan Road street where our friends Araya and Andrea lived. That street was our dwelling in the several days we spent here in 2014. We always stay here with them, except for several nights of interval in the tourist carafón around Khaosan Road, By understanding that they taught us a more interesting city than that of the flip flops, Ipads, prostitutes and scorpions. He had been in Bangkok for four years and she is Thai and that opened the door to certain incomprehensible conversations and routines for us. We now return to check if that city of a trip can be the city of an inhabitant. Can?
We have chosen to stay, until you find an apartment, In the Cape House, A FABULAR QUALITY/PRICE. We leave the bags, We take a shower, And we go out. We discover that Bangkok is something different. It has just changed anything around except a new area of bars and restaurants that raised at the end of the street. All recognizable, almost the same, And yet something seems different.
It smells strong as always. To pipes, smoke and oil. The same street food stalls and the massage centers with an undecided ending. High towers, narrow alleys. All vibrant, fast, live. Europe does not have that energy. It has other things, Good and bad, But in Europe you don't feel that feeling that everything that is not new is old. "This house we will see now is old", A real estate agent told us days later. How old are you?, asked. "More than 20", He excused himself. And we laugh remembering our house of almost 100 years of Rome and its minimum tangled sliding door elevator that took eternity to climb four floors.
The Lumphini Park is still there, nice, tropical, With his tamarinds in Apnea
The Lumphini Park is still there, nice, tropical, With his tamarinds in Apnea. And the precise Sky Train flies over the city. And the big shopping centers are full of teenagers who listen to playing music groups with bangs and then, euphoric, They are atibor from Japanese cakes. And we pass through the Hindu temple of Erawan with their dancers who dance with the balance of the puppets while blessing couples. There, in 2015, A bomb killed 20 people and wounded more than one hundred. But there is nothing to remember so much horror because, suspect, Thailand heals his scars applying amnesia.
The city continues to grow, How eight years ago, up. There are works by great skyscrapers everywhere. Bangkok is one of those cities on the planet that does not seek to redeem. Bangkok works, It suffers, And then you enjoy. Nothing is easy but everything is possible. Bangkok requires contradicting all the time.
We like supermarkets and antique stores more than bracelets and tattoos markets. We like the hedonic point of its traditional massages, The coming and going of boats in the thick waters of the Chao Phraya river, Your old wooden houses, Your tasty and slightly spicy food, Chinese furniture, how cheap it is to have fun, His technological avant -garde, What does the Pole's chicken Fried Chickn know the same, Its traditions without impositions, Your constant welcome, the feeling of freedom, The sensuality, Respect, Its quiet people, warm, rare in their tastes, garments… Rare for us, For our desire to feel confusion in the eyes.
There are no names, There are no questions. There are few laughs in this part of the world
And we like a certain human distance less, I have always felt in Southeast Asia, in which the cordiality and shyness brushes the apathy. There are no names, There are no questions. There are few laughs in this part of the world. Or at least there are less than elsewhere where I have lived as southern Africa or Mexico. And there are few wide sidewalks and in which there is walking next to thousands of vehicles. Occasionally, even, You walk down the road because there is no room for pedestrians. “Don't carry a bicycle. They will believe that you are poor and cars will not respect you. You have black hair on top and think you are from here and they will respect you less ”, Khun told us, A Thai, When you just arrived, Francesca said that she thought perhaps an electric bike to go to work. And all that, Not walking and not pedaling, We put it in the part of the. And none of that was something we asked eight years ago because eight years ago we cared to ask ourselves how in so much heat and car went to work.
And there is a gross sex, Little erotic, for bulk sale, which was symbolized in those street vendors who sell dildos with gombolas. Bangkok crosses the line of excessive sometimes and turns a lid into a hamburger. The taboo is less taboo in a showcase.
There is a gross sex, Little erotic, for bulk sale, which was symbolized in those street vendors who sell dildos with gombolas
And there is a perennial jam. And people. Many. I thought I didn't like big cities, I dreamed of being one of those guys who choose to live in lost villages and deserted islands. Those types are more interesting, But it's not me. At least today, Maybe tomorrow I can be as many things that I am now and I never imagined. I loved living six months in Vilankulos, A Lost village from Mozambique, But it turns out that I was passionate about four years in Mexico City, And I think Bangkok will love, How I was excited to lose myself for Tokyo, New Delhi, Istanbul and even Los Angeles. In Bangkok there 10,8 millions of inhabitants with whom to share the non -sidewalks. But that is strange because one feels almost always comfortably only having people around everywhere. So that, like so many things, It seems good and bad at the same time.
And almost all that we already knew. Because we already sensed or told us in 2014. We saw all its virtues and defects, Very evident, and we made our sums and subtractions. We understood then that perhaps this was a good place to be able to live in the future and here we are in the present. This Asia, I intuit without certainty and with the desire to make mistakes, It is not my place in the world, Name of this blog and registration in my wedding ring, But I love the idea of being able to verify it. I don't look for the perfect or calm, I look for the diverse. Here we live now, passionate about the challenge, eager to squeeze it, Happy inhabitants among so many doubts to solve. Did the city change or do we change? Maybe no one changed. Maybe we just moved, the city and us, and we confuse being in another place with being in the same place being another. That bangkok no longer exists and that Javier either. There are these, those now, Because everything that is not present is not.
31 August 2022. Almost a month ago I live in Bangkok.
