A street corner in Bangkok

I’m standing at the intersection of four wide roads.  The heat is overwhelming.  An invisible boiling water soaked blanket, smothering the city.  I’m so hot that I feel as if I’m standing in a steaming shower, fully clothed.  Even the belt on my shorts is damp.  A dark stain creeping across the leather from the pool of sweat collected in the curve of my lower back.

High rise buildings fence in the surrounding streets, trapping the heat, noise and smells.  A gold and white temple, all curved lines and painted statuary is an exuberant juxtoposition against the the flat, straight, blank towers.

As I breathe in the clammy humidity, the first thing to hit my nostrils, making me gag, is the sweet stench of  rubbish rotting in the heat.  The nausea inducing smell of decay is cut with the heavy, perfumed fragrance of incense burning at a nearby shrine and the woody smoke of the food vendors’ charcoal burners.  Cooking food, exhaust fumes and cigarette smoke from the people hurrying past join the already heady mix.

The food vendors have set up stall along the length of the pavement.  They squat beside their buckets of fire, cooking a inventive array of snacks and meals, boiled eggs, baked bananas, pancakes, soups, stews, animal parts on sticks, sticky rice steamed in little banana leaf parcels.  Charcoal flames are fanned with one hand while pancakes are flipped with the other.   Customers get their food to go, or perch on tiny red plastic stools, slurping savoury, lemony, soup from large bowls, fiery ringlets of chili floating on the top.

On the opposite pavement, there are a row of fruit vendors.  The ready peeled, chopped and deseeded fruit is arranged in the vendors’ glass carts, like colourful gems in a jewellery shop display case.  Next to the fruit vendors are carts selling drinks.  Bottles of warm, lurid, sticky, fizzy liquid, their colours an artificial counterpoint to the fruit.  Drinks the colour of Smurfs, yellow day glo legwarmers and red London buses.  When you buy one, it is poured from the valuable bottle into a small plastic bag, which is swiftly converted into a drinking vessel with a knotted elastic band and a straw.  I would love the relief of adding ice to my drink, watching drops of condensation form, but I’ve seen it being dragged along the street by men with ropes like icebergs floating down a canal, picking up the detritus of the city along the way.

Life in Bangkok is never quiet.  A cacophany of beeping horns, revving motorbikes, the chirping song of caged birds, waiting to be bought and released for good luck, bouncy Thai pop music spilling out of shops, rhymic chanting and clanging bells from the temple.  And over it all, the soft lilting voices of the inhabitants, a thousand conversations in their melodical tonal language, sentences ending with a polite upbeat “krup” for men or a gentle falling “kaaa” for women.

I stand at the intersection, people rushing around me, bodies brushing past mine as they hurry on their way.  As I absorb the sounds, sights and smells, I know that this is why I travel.  To feel alive.

For this week’s Sleep is for the Weak writing workshop, I chose the prompt “Write about one moment with all of richest, imaginative sensory description you can muster.”

Tags: Bangkok, Thailand