Bangkok Bus 53 {1}

Bangkok Bus 53 {2}

The Villa Guest House

The Villa Guest House has a large brass bell with a chain attached. You have to ring it to get into the villa. There is also a small, rather racist sign on the door that reads,

“Ring the bell please, then wait for a moment. It takes some time from the house to the gate. NO THAIS ALLOWED PLEASE!”

 

I rang the bell. After I rang the bell the door was opened by an elderly, rather small Thai woman.  She had reading glasses slipping down her nose. Also a repaired cleft palette. It left her smile off centered, her speech animated.  She tried as best as possible to speak English. Finally, I tired of trying to figure her English out and started speaking Thai. 

Fortunately I wasn’t Thai. My language was just a ploy, so I was allowed to pass through the lovely garden. We went into the main living room of the house.

Family History

I asked her about the place and she told of its history. Her family built the house over 100 years ago. Her name is Lek (Tiny) and she lives on here, in the house she was born in. She has a recluse brother. The only two left in their family dynasty.  

When I asked her how many people stay here (meaning paying guests) she misunderstood me. She began to recite a long list. Her mother and father. Maternal and paternal grandmothers and grandfathers. Great aunts and great uncles. Aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews – all the family members who once made their lives here in these 13 rooms.

All who are now dead and gone.

Lek and I immediately connected. Ignoring young backpackers, who complain about how old and run down her house is, we started jabbering away in Thai. We laughed at the ignorance of the foreigners who stay. From the chaos that is Bangkok, this historic house – with its teak architecture and the uniqueness of a fine garden tucked away – is a gem.

After one night she moved me up to her best room. A spacious place on the second floor at the back of the house. It has ten foot ceilings with floor to ceiling screened windows on three sides of the room. Teakwood shutters that you can close. There are tropical trees all around so it almost feels treehouse like.

All the furniture is beautiful.

Old solid pieces of joint and tenoned teak. A mahogany framed, silver-distressed mirror with etched Chinese characters hangs above the table. All elements from when Lek’s family immigrated here from China over one hundred years ago.

 

It feels like the world of Kipling or Conrad and the Heart of Darkness. I’m enchanted.

Nature Sings

In the garden, at night, a chorus of frogs sing one note in a sustained high-pitched voice. In the pale, extended predawn light, unrecognizable birds pick up when the frogs stop. Staccato ensembles of various calls are punctuated by one bird. His high, doo-wop song is so distinctive and permeating that it puts all the other birds to shame.

They all seem to shut up for a moment, simultaneously, out of respect.

I found this place on a website. After I read the mixed reviews, I was convinced it would be perfect for me.

I’m much too old for hostels. I didn’t want the air conditioned sterility of a modern room. This one-hundred year old teak house – with its antique beds, chairs, clocks, ceramics, books and ghosts – suits me well. There are cobwebs around the light fixtures. The stand-fans are so old they only have 4, S-curved wires to protect one from the spin of the brass blades. There are no sheets for the hard, cotton-batted mattresses. There are no towels, no soap or shampoo for the showers.

All of this absence of belongings are complaints on the website reviews. That endeared me to Lek way before I even met her – her sensible style and irrational manner.

Since I started typing the night has fallen and the rain has tapered off. It’s nice and cool.  

Lek’s thrift leads her to using the smallest wattage bulbs. Even with all the lamps on you can barely see. Her stinginess is impressive, but she is also strict about all shoes off at the door. No backpacks placed on the floor.

In some odd way, this makes up for what she doesn’t provide.

Local Insight 53

I had to purchase a ticket to Chiangmai so I asked Lek how to get to the train staton. She suggested taking the bus line 53, as the bus stop is conveniently located right at the end of her soi.

And what a pleasure route 53 turns out to be.

It takes a circuitous and convoluted path through the best sections of the city. It is the perfect overview for anyone wanting to see and understand the highlights and underbelly of this place. It’s especially nice in that it completely bypasses the newer sectors of Bangkok.

Capitalist Consumers

Who needs high rise malls, Sky Trains, luxury hotels, condos – things that can be seen anywhere in the world? They only have to do with global capitalist consumerism – nothing to do with the identity of a culture and its people.

On route 53 you won’t see the Alexander McQueen store perched above the popular Erewan shrine or the six story Siam Paragon Mall where you can take a photo with waxen Tom Cruise from Madam Trusseau’s or buy a Lamburguini from the dealer right there on the third floor.

Instead, you wait with the few locals, usually a group of students, some mid-level officials in their crisply ironed uniforms, housewives with shopping bags.

If one is lucky, a monk or two.

 

Bus Rituals

There is a ritual on Bangkok buses that hasn’t changed in the forty odd years I’ve been coming here. Indeed, even the buses seem like the same ones I encountered on my first visit.

There is a driver and then there is his attendant. They basically run the show. They make sure everyone gets off and on in a timely manner, shouting out directions of clearance, when to gun it or when to stop. You see them hanging out the bus doors and waving passage to let other drivers know he is going to cut in and you’d better get the hell out of the way.

In between these intricate and delicate moves, he then tracks down each person who boards the bus. By shaking his cylindrical change canister – a marvel of ingenuity itself – you know things will happen.

Magic Canister

The canister is about a foot long and about four inches in diameter. It is halved and hinged lengthwise. Easily popped open, it reveals the chambers inside that house areas for the different coins. There’s also a roll of tickets. After he tosses in your money and makes change if necessary, he pulls a ticket from the roll, snaps the lid shut and tears it off.

But wait. The process still isn’t done.

Before handing you your ticket he takes his extra long and sharpened thumbnail. With that he punctures your ticket to mark it as spent. Only then, it is handed over. This all takes a matter of seconds. He then again gives his canister a brutal shake, and flips it open to take money from the next rider.

I have marveled at the precision and memory this all takes. There are, at times, hundreds of people embarking / disembarking and he never seems a mistake to make.

Buddha’s Ears

The sex of the attendants seems to be divided equally.

Just yesterday, it was a very tiny, elfin-like elderly woman. She looked to be in her sixties, 4’6″ tops with a twenty inch waist. Her earlobes drooped with heavy, gold-loop earrings whose weight had stretched the pierced holes over the years.

Buddha, an aristocratic and wealthy prince, had long stretched ears. He wore heavy gold earrings or precious stones as a status symbol, and the weight stretched his ear lobes dramatically. When he finally renounced his wealth and discarded his jewelry, his ear lobes were permanently stretched. 
To Buddhists, Buddha's long earlobes symbolize a conscious rejection of the material world in favor of spiritual enlightenment.

Her hair was dyed jet-black. Pulled back into a severe bun, it had a pinch-comb holding it in place. Small as she was, her presence was large as she squirreled her way in and out of the packed bus. Her high, shrill voice carried grandly over the gunning engine. She was on the outside step when traffic tried to hone in on her territory. If they did she’d hang-off the side rail with her hand waving wildly. This was her road. She let you know you’d better not cross her line.

All bustle and business she greeted every person that boarded her vehicle with a loud “Sawadii khaa!”. When the last rider was on her step she would shout out even louder, so the driver could hear her above the engine,

“PAY KHAAAA!!” (Let’s go!).

At the same time she began shaking her canister to let you know she was headed in your direction.

Bobae Market

Yesterday we passed a large market that sprawled for blocks along a klong [canal]. I went back there today for a shirt and a phaa khaw maa, the traditional one piece of cloth worn around the waist by Thai men. As it turns out, Bobae Market is the wholesale clothing district for the city. It is a maze of small alleyways, smaller sidewalks and, finally,  even smaller pathways. They all intersect in a confusing and, at times, exhausting tangle of shops. Some of these go deep and high with bundled and plastic wrapped shirts, pants, bras, underwear, jackets, jeans, scarves, purses, socks.

Accessories – anything that can be worn or carried – can be found there.

While looking around, some of the shops are nothing more than a rack of hangered shirts tended by one small girl with an even smaller sibling. Cats dominate here. Because they keep rodents at bay, cats are given free rein and food.

I saw one family of four people lounging on a low table surrounded by hanging purses on rack walls going ten feet up. With their late breakfast scattered about on various plates and bowls, two cats were eating rice out of one bowl. The two diaperless  kids sucked on mangos from another. The dad lay back, his wife-beater-T rolled to his neck,  half-asleep, smoking a cone-cheroot.

This type of entrepreneurship I can understand and relate to.

Shops run by Arabs or East Indians are found when you cross over the klong. They have a bit more of a professional edge, but not much.

Klong Spray

Crossing back over I hit the edge of the market where it meets the canal. A path follows it for several blocks. Then, instead of clothing, the stalls turn into food vendors. There is a large opening that goes to the dock where you catch the public transit boats.

The small cafe shops teeter over the canal with tables and small stools. Every aspect of it is rickety and a bit sketchy in feel. To get to the tables you literally have to run the gauntlet of kitchens that line the path on both sides. The path is not more than two feet wide. It makes for close quarters with the charcoal braziers going, woks worked to a frenzy. You and several others are trying to outmaneuver elbows, servers running bowls full of boiling soup and fresh out-of-the-wok dishes. Once at the table it’s all worthwhile.

 

Over across the canal, old wooden houses list every which way but true. Life, as if a stage, goes on. Clothes washing, kids bathing, women squatting down and tucking into a bowl of noodles, hanging orchids tended to and caged birds waiting for the right time to make their calls. Nearly every window hosts a hangered array of clothes set out to dry. Cats parade the narrow, uneven curb above the battered retaining walls.

Waves from every passing boat constantly assault the walls. They crash in an effluent and litter-rich high splash that, even from your perch on the other side, you can smell.

You pray the spray carries downwind. Hopefully not over to infect your plate of lovely rice.