Hey you! Where you go?

07Apr07

The constant cry heard on the streets, the shouts from tuk-tuk drivers and the taxi men. Good question, I think as I step down into the teeming mass of life that is Khao San road. My body, now used to moving in crowded Asian streets, ducks and weaves of it’s own accord as I proceed along the wide gap between the stalls. Only this isn’t like an Asian street. At least, not what I’ve come to think of as an Asian street.  There are rippling waves of human bodies, cramming into the long, pedestrianised street. Every colour of skin passed in and out of view, from the pasty fish-meat of newly arrived Europeans to the crispy tans of the rural Thais. It’s got all the ingredients of a South Asian city, hoards of push-stalls selling mouth watering delights, packs of rick-shaw drivers waiting to pounce on their would-be customers, restaurant touts clawing at passersby. But there are differences. Big ones that take a few minutes to set in. There are as many locals as there are tourists walking those streets. As many brown faces buying the street noodles as white. As many tight jeans and flip-flops as there are shorts and back-packs. As many high-pitched calls in Thai as there are of the deeper vibrations of English and German and French. I’m standing in the most touristic center of Bangkok, and it still firmly belongs to the Thais.

The street-stalls are not designed as a tourist attraction, the signs are in a scrawl I cannot even begin to decipher and the prices don’t change depending on your skin. The image is not of a poor, third-world people trying to scrape a living from the tourists. Competition is not rife among the salesmen, no one is scrabbling for my Baht. The scene is of an industrious commercial center, wealthy and poor Thais haggle over the price of fruit and gobble noodles at the plastic, portable canteens that cover the pathways. Groups of stalls form makeshift markets and people order fruit drinks and fried fish from a pancake salesman, who dutifully passes the request on to his fellow chefs. A crap-sausage seller abandons his cart to get change from the 7eleven he has set up shop in front of.

The morning is hazy, and very hot. At nearly 40 degrees in the shade, a steady flow of sweat has replaced the beads of moisture that was my appearance in India. Pausing to buy a chilled bottle of water from the woman outside my hostel, I step quickly along road my hostel is on. I pass a few travel agents and a hotel before turning down an alley dominated by massage and beauty salons. I smile and wave off the interest of a tuk-tuk driver waiting expectantly at the corner. I stop for a few seconds to drool at the fried chicken being served at one of the many canteen-like restaurants, filled near capacity with locals. Every time of the day is lunch/dinner/snack time for the Thai men and women, and late morning is no exception. Turning away from the temptations, I summon the courage and step with my very best expression of determination onto the zebra crossing. The constant flow of speeding traffic tries to fool you into thinking that you will never get across, but the trick is to make your own opportunity. I step straight into the path of a taxi which reluctantly admits that I am part of the current reality and slows from a screaming ninety kilometers to a crawl in the blink of an eye. I set my stare on the next driver blurring his way towards me and again he’s forced, but only at the very last moment, to return to a speed more suitable to land transportation. After striking home on the opposite path, I walk down a thin, dark alley and reach one of the small river docks. Buying a ticket for the public ferry I join the gathering group watching the boat pull up to the dock. I find a seat next to a middle aged man and smile at the routine comedy that is the exchange between the driver and the conductor. As the long vessel motors through the various pick-up points, I look around myself.

Young girls in mini-skirts with mobile phones chatter away loudly to my right. A young boy and his father sit in front of me, watching the passing scenery. Two western couples walk down past me to find a seat, both of the women are wearing loose tops that hang down, flaunting their sunburned breasts. One of the men is wearing only a pair of shorts, his uncovered torso decorated with tattoos. Behind me an attractive Thai couple are standing at the railings, the man with his arm around the woman’s thin waist, she with her’s draped over her shoulder. An old woman in helped aboard by her husband while they chatter away in Thai.

There is something that is so different to the South-Asian world we have left, so different that I have to stop myself when I start to see this bustling city as one that we’ve left behind in Europe. It certainly is like nothing in the Western world that I grew up in, but something so powerful links the two cultures.

Freedom.

Not the freedom from political strife, because there are few countries more precariously placed on the political merry-go-round than Thailand. Not the freedom from poverty or ignorance, because the Siamese people are still a developing economy and education is not as widespread as it should be. The freedom is that of expression. The freedom to walk and talk and act like you. Not how other people think you should, or how other people have in the past. And all of the craziness in this incredibly alive city is a testimony to this freedom. The prostitutes openly displaying their wares. The  homosexual couples openly walking hand in hand. The young girls and boys openly dressing how they want, talking how they want, being out late and having friends from any kind of background, gender or race. Openness everywhere I look.

Neither of the Two Legends are religious. We don’t follow any system of belief but our own. And after coming from a three month swim in the religion-soaked environment of the Hindu cultures, it feels like I’m coming out of a heavy rain that keeps your head down and your mind closed.

I look around the busy ferry and the passing Bangkok, and I breath in the freedom with a smile.

I think I’m going to like Thailand.

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