Lil Wayne – Lollipop (Nasty Ways Remix)
I’m currently attempting to organize the ridiculous number of sketchbooks and notebooks I got floating all over the place; came across this stuff I wrote down in Bangkok last year, when I was sorting out a new china visa during the whole olympic visa shitshow.
Notes from the Side of the Soi
- looks like johnny depp
There is a massage parlor opposite my hostel. (Of course there’s a massage parlor.) The sign reads “Come get yourself beautiful!!! Special promotion!!!” 7/11’s everywhere. Yesterday I bought a pack of smokes at the “Amazing Minimart.”
As I’m writing this there’s a chubby adolescent boy shuffling by sipping from a straw stuck in a transparent plastic bag filled with ice and what looks like coca-cola. Like a very small grocery bag. He’s wearing a headset with large oval earphones and a bent microphone jutting out one side. I really want to reach out and grab him and demand to know what he’s listening to.
There are large yellow dogs sleeping everywhere. They are huge and most of them female, big saggy nipples hang from massive bellies. The dogs are similar to the dogs in India, although those were more animated and angry, generally much thinner. Fat Bangkok bitches.
Taxi drivers here are a lot more relaxed in their approach to fare. They’ll turn on the meter only if asked and never bother with exact change. They also never say no to a tip. It’s best to hail a cab off a busy road, the cabbies lurking in the alleyways with their bright pink rides stationed on the roadside will hassle you and refuse to turn meters on, demanding ridiculous fares designed to be haggled over.
Peddlers walk around with large brass bells tied to their carts. The bells have a bright clear ring, like cymbals. Sound is distinctly oriental. One cart I saw had a sticker on the back – outline of a girl putting on (or taking off) her panties. No annotation. A bit of a wtf. Unlike in Beijing, where a peddler will generally pick a spot and stick to it for the day, it seems in Bangkok he will move several or more times a day. I want the spicy noodles they’re peddling, but currently my tongue piercing is swollen and I got bad food poisoning. Food no can have.
- sketch rendition of sticker
I shouldn’t be constantly looking for comparison, but in so many ways what I see in Bangkok is a mixture of Bombay and Beijing. The trees and exotic flowers and vines, poking out of every crack in the pavement, look fat and lush, threatening to take over the shiny chrome civilization. The air is thick and tropical, moist like in Bombay, it settles on the skin in a matter of minutes. I don’t know how to put it in a subtle way, but magic is the word that pops into my head. The same sort of magic as in Bombay. Beijing is far from that, over there it’s all no bullshit construction dust for breakfast and graying vegetation looking properly oppressed next to gigantic concrete overpasses. Earthy-brown strappy sandals versus cheap glossy office loafers. Bangkok seems full of dirt and excitement and secrets and rules you discover only after you break them. The east is tasty.
Rickety hutments with glossy red satellite dishes along a dirty canal under a busy bridge. School uniforms. Strange bouts of rain, put me in a strange mood – tense, erratic, changeable. Feelin female. Some men dawdling around their motorcycles on the roadside the other day made lip-smacking noises as I passed them, much like in Bombay. Note: men in Bangkok are flirty. (in Beijing – silent, surly, devious.)
Tourists with fannypacks, tall blonde Germans with their golden children, skipping next to daddy’s golden shiny legs. The white devils. Unreal white. Wishing I was more of a white devil. Russia stuck in the long deprived rut, then decline and transition along a plateau of mistrust and resentment toward nobody and nothing in particular. Over here we are the laowai. We are the farangs. It’s nice to feel identified. Feels pretty good to be unjustly lumped together in one category. Western individualism is lonely.
Tags: bangkok
Ive always felt that Thai food is like a wonderful combination of Chinese and Indian food… and looks like the same holds for the cities as well!