so my day really started with a street-side cappachino - though next time i will follow the thai's and take it iced. after a quick run through a curious mall (i needed a few things) i stopped on my way back to the guest house for lunch along one of the alleys, or soi, that i have to navigate through. not really sure how i find my way in and out of this place. chinatown is a warren. just when i'm convinced that i am lost i find myself around the corner from this guest house. anyway, i ate at a stall that served a lovely roast duck on a bed of rice with sweet soy sauce, fresh cucumber and thin slices of ginger (probably galangal). with a little fish sauce and chili, it was delicious. it was a cart, with a few ducks and some pork hanging in a glass case, a half dozen steel tables surrounded by some brightly coloured kiddy stools.
across the street, and everywhere in the neighbourhood, were old wooden two story shops. they suggested a more glorious past, but now served largely as a kind of way station or purgatory for the industrial age. one shop was piled high, all the way to the ceiling, with various sizes of transmission clogs. there was a narrow path through the dark piles to a glowing shrine in the back. next door a stack of transmissions lay like bones.
i tired to sleep through the afternoon, with little luck. (its been two days now without sleep.) i ventured out to the local night markets. as the motorbike traffic slows down the alleys become patios and dining halls. i had a a really spectacular dinner of barbecued satay chicken with a spicy peanut sauce (more spicy and sour than i ever make it). brilliantly it was served to me with a side of cucumber, thin sliced and raw shallot, with large pieces of red chili in a sweet vinegar. the combinations were so good i found myself smiling more and more towards the end of the meal. all this in the midst of a street that reminded me of bladerunner.
somehow i found my way back to the guest house just when i was completely lost, grabbed a beer on the rooftop and watched the carnival of lighted riverboat cruises pass by. and now i will go and pretend to be sleeping for a few hours while my internal clock adjusts.
bangkok is more seductive than i remembered. its also more of a shithole. it reminds me of those "vanitas" paintings of decedent still lifes that are rotting, over-ripe fruit and rotten meat covered in flies next to gold clocks and skulls.