Off The Beaten Path

Asleep On The Bangkok Street

 

It was a hot and steamy evening, and I was dripping. I was wondering if I would have the time to get back to the hotel, and shower before I left for the airport. 

It was a dilemna that I faced: do I travel while being sticky and sweaty, or do I have a shower and put my sticky, sweaty clothes into my suitcase. Neither was the most attractive option. Either I would stink, or my clothes in the suitcase would stink. 

As I pondered these weighty issues, I came upon this gentleman sleeping on the street, while someone else was pulling out of the shopping arcade in their gleaming car. The bright lights in the McDonald's outlet beckoned, but I had lost my appetite. 

My weighty issues suddenly seemed inconsequential, as I was reminded that other people have other, more weighty issues on their minds: where to sleep at night. 

This, the question of God, is something that has always bothered me. If indeed God exists, and if indeed God is all knowing, all merciful, then why does such injustice exist? Why indeed, could the Marquis de Sade write a horrific book like "Juliette", or "The 120 Days of Sodom". I think that those books reflect his angst with the world. 

I have seen many people who sleep on pavements. They leave villages, and come to cities, looking for a better life. God, it seems, looks down on them with compassion, and promises them a happier life in the Great Herafter. 

Atheism, while it may be a much happier philosophy, still does not solve the problem of the man sleeping on the street in Bangkok. 

 

On The Street In Bangkok. NightFall

I was back at the Shangri-La in Bangkok a year after I took the black and white shots in the morning. Back in Bangkok for one more conference. The days were busy, but about an hour before leaving for my flight, I suddenly found myself footloose and fancy free. I was off like a shot, to see how the street looked at night.

The scenes at night were quite different, but in a way that I did not really anticipate. The morning was full of bustle, full of the energy of a new day. Despite the fact that I took the shots in black and white, I found them to be more energetic than the colour ones that I took a year later. 

In the evening, the scene reflected fatigue, a sense of being tired. The day had taken it's toll, and I doubt every one had had a good day of sales. What was left, was probably a walk back to their homes, sleep, arguments and possibly, a bed full of bugs. 

 Night can be quite a strange time of the day. Night reveals what the day hides. This evening, it reflected depression. I am not sure that I would willingly choose the life that these people lead. No one would. We all want to do well. We all want the benefits of the material world, no matter the sacrifices we have to make with regards to our spiritual well being.

In the chase for money, the medical community gains: we all end up with doctors, medicines, operations, psychiatrists.... 

The streets of Bangkok don't give the answers. Maybe, the wind does.

On The Street In Bangkok. Morning

Over the next weeks, I will focus on snippets of places that I have been. There will be no focus on any one country, the way that I focussed on China. That's because I lived in China for several years, and these are shots of places I have been to.

Most of the time, we shoot pictures of landscapes or monuments. We often forget to shoot street scenes, and these can be as exciting as shooting any monument.

I took these shots one morning, on the main road outside the Shangri-La Hotel in Bangkok. I had gone there for a conference, and had taken my camera. I was itching to do some photography, and I had not done any black and white stuff for a long time. So, there I was, with my humble film camera on the streets of the city.

There is a bustle about the streets, even at seven o'clock in the morning. The shopkeepers, like the handsome and elegant fellow in the above shot, who open their stalls and wait for the first sale of the day. Elsewhere, you see the roadside tea stalls, selling tea and snacks to passers by, to people waiting for their bus, or for people in other stalls.

The lady selling flowers early morning prepares her bunches. A good deal of these flowers seem to be sold to ladies who want to wear them in their hair, or to others for their early morning prayers.

And then, there are those fellows who simply enjoy a good gossip at their stall.

Refreshed after the night's sleep, they return to the footpath, full of energy. The early morning rays seem to give them energy, as they start the routine of the day with energy and cheer.

Ladies, some of them, stay lost in their own world. Waiting for what? I was tempted to ask the lady below, but I was afraid she would scratch my eyes out. There are times when cowardice is the best policy.

However, I sometimes ask myself if the people who return to their stalls sometimes feel fed to the teeth with the sheer tedium of coming back to the same space, day after day, selling the same cheap stuff, to undergo another day of tedious bargaining with tourists who try to squeeze every baht out of them, and then traipse happily off to the Shangri-La to spend 100 USD on a meal without a thought in their heads?

A baht saves, a hundred dollars spent, is a good way to make yourself feel good.

Perhaps, it is just the happiness of returning to the company of their friends, their fellow stall owners, is what drives them. Maybe, just maybe, it is a way to escape the dreariness of their homes.

In the corporate world, we are often given to moaning about our lives. Flying economy is such a horror! We'd like to be pampered in business class, and to be stuffed to the gills with bland, unhealthy airline food. We write tomes on motivation, the desire to achieve, the desire to excel; the endless blah blah of more corporate talk.

I think most of us forget that there is a whole world out there who just struggle to survive, and to make two ends meet.

More on that the next time..