Backyard Bangkok

Our taxi driver squeezed the car through a narrow street in backyard Bangkok before coming to a stop alongside another tiny alley.

“No more go,” he announced, waving both hands. “Hotel over there.” He pointed to a back street that was scarcely wide enough to fit two bicycles side-by-side.

We paid the cabbie 300 baht (not a bad price coming from Don Mueang). I slung my pack over my shoulders as Jenelle pulled hers across the pavement. We moved cautiously into unknown territory, quickly observing the scent of grease and urine. A stray cat with wide blue eyes watched us pass by.

Our hotel was in a rough section of town, but it supposedly had a breathtaking view of the Chao Phraya River from its eighth-floor restaurant, and to boot, it was only a 10-minute walk to Chinatown.

The hotel fit well with the neighborhood. Squeezed between other drab buildings, the hotel was very inconspicuous, and would be nearly unrecognizable as a place of accommodation without the green awning draped over the front. Inside our room the walls appeared unfinished; the floor felt of concrete. Plywood was part of the decorative motif, and our shower and toilet appeared antiques.

Much to her dismay, Jenelle quickly discovered that the room had no air conditioning to combat the stifling Bangkok heat. Instead, a large ceiling fan hovered over the bed. (We developed a coping mechanism of taking cold showers, then lying wet on the bed, with the blades of the ceiling fan circling above us. Sometimes we took several cold showers a night.) As for drinkable water, the hotel left a pitcher of it next to the television with two glasses. We could refill the pitcher in the hallway.

There were no major tourist sites within our backyard neighborhood. We used it as a thoroughfare to get to other parts of town. As much as we attempted to learn the tangled web of streets, we constantly got lost. One miscalculation would send you into terra incognita.

As I mentioned earlier, our neighborhood smelled like grease. This was because they sold second-hand car parts here. Walking down the street you would find heaps of metal, including engines and mufflers that belonged to anything from cars to mopeds. It's like having the junkyard as close and convenient as the grocery store. Sometimes a couple of men would be tending the heap by sitting next to it on chairs, smoking cigarettes and talking. Any foreigner who walked past would get a look of suspicion.

The other smell—urine—we learned frequently came from night. At least twice while walking through a dark alleyway, we witnessed men urinating on the street. This would make Jenelle very uneasy and we would always detour and take a longer route to avoid them.

Just below our hotel, pretty much at the side of a parking garage, was a Chinese Taoist Temple. Outside hung red Chinese globes and inside I could hear people singing or chanting. I didn't dare go in. The temple was very simple, and if you weren't right there, you wouldn't even notice it. Nearby a small shrine displayed several figurines, as well as flowers and incense sticks. A small sign was in both Chinese and Thai.

Just a few feet away was a tiny “public” bathroom. Having a curiosity of what bathrooms look like in Thailand, I was anxious to check it out. The closer you are to the tourist centers, the more likely the bathrooms will have a Western style. This was no where near the tourist centers.

The little room was slightly bigger than a closet, with a squat-toilet on the floor. No toilet paper. Just a hose inside a basin and a plastic bowl. There was a hand-rail, just in case you needed something to hold on to. Very rudimentary indeed.

We passed a small group of children playing with a basketball. No hoop. No goal. Just a an orange rubber ball that they bounced across the pavement.

These backyard streets lacked the vendors that you might see in Chinatown or Khao San Road. The vendors were there, but in fewer numbers.

On our last evening in Bangkok, on the way to the hotel, we passed a lady selling pad thai from a little stand in front of her home. One plastic table with two chairs were tucked into the shop. A windowed refrigerator had a few beverages for us to choose from, as well as the ingredients she needed for the pad thai. We watched as she cut all the fresh ingredients on a wooden cutting board, then fried them inside a wok to make my meal. I ate it right there, sitting at the little plastic table. Several flies swarmed around the humid outdoor room. The dish cost me 40 baht.

That evening I stood at the balcony of our hotel that overlooks the backside of several high-rise buildings. I thought about the people who live there. Thai's are very hard workers and don't have a lot of material wealth. Their dwellings are small. I could see that from my vantage point. I watched one lady hang her laundry—one by one—on her tiny rooftop.  She probably washed them by hand.

Even though we would be flying home tomorrow, life here would keep going. A backyard that appears crazy and chaotic to me, will continue to be their ordinary way of life. ♠