Southeast Asia's Urban Jewel: Bangkok in Photos

Chinatown, Bangkok.

There's no other way to say it: I loved Bangkok. I didn't stay in Khaosan Road, so I luckily avoided getting sucked into that swirling mess of happy hours, flowy pants and presumably lots of neon. Without those perimeters, I was free to explore the city widely and get into everything else the city has to offer. 

These are some photos I took with little commentary attached. Bangkok is nothing like I expected. Besides pockets where you can see the ping-pong shows and sex work and backpacker dives, the city is vibrant, easy to get around, and pleasantly caught between an older era and modern glitz and glam. There are energetic art and music scenes, incredible markets, monks chanting in temples, urban dilapidation and air-conditioned malls; chaotic Chinatown, expat Thong Lor, slums near the port, sacred trees  wrapped in brightly coloured cloth climbing out of concrete apartments. Sneaking to the top floor of a hotel under renovation to privately view the breadth of the Bangkok. 

Bangkok deserves exploration. It's hard to be disappointed with anything there, instead constantly surprised at the diversity, creativity and vibrant nature of life in that city.

The Reclining Buddha of Wat Pho.

The Sticky Rice.

Patpong.

Wat Pho.

  

Wat Pho.

Monk laundry.

Canals of Bangkok.

View from the hotel.

60th floor renovations.

Bang Rak.

Phetchaburi, Thailand: A Glamorous, Mildly Creepy Buddhist Cave Temple (That May Relate to Ladies of the Night, Who Knows)

This temple is located near the entrance to the Khao Luang Caves in Phetchaburi, Thailand. I'll be frank, open and honest: I have no idea what this is or what was going on here, it's just pretty cool.

Leaving the caves, I was walking towards the town center when I heard some enchanting music coming from a temple complex. I walked in, looked at some buildings, saw a group of friendly female monks, and I thought that was that. I was about to leave when one motherly monk instructed with finger pointing that I should go inside a small cave. Why not.

I popped my head in and I couldn't believe what I saw. The perfect expression for Thailand: neon lights and garish colours illuminating statues of Buddha along with glamorous female figures splattered with make-up and gold leaf. It was like a cave temple in a club. Somehow the two worlds seem to overlap for a second. The floor, as you can see in the photos, was covered in fake grass and these tiny caverns resembled the Shire from the Lord of the Rings. Little houses kept safe statuettes of women, decorated brightly and without much concern for taste or style. It was gaudy, it was kitschy, but somehow I got the impression these idols carried a sexual nature as well. 

There were maybe four or five Shire houses in total, each with its own female form. Gifts are scattered around and at the feet of each of the statues, ranging from make-up kits and pretty dresses still in plastic wrap, to fake iPhones and necklaces. They were offerings, I guess, and I suppose people would come here to try and shift their fortunes in their favour by pleasing the little deity. The entire thing felt like a psychedelic cave doll house. 

Traditional Thai Music for a Funeral, Phetchaburi

I was walking through the grounds of a temple in Phetchaburi, Thailand when I heard music coming from one of the buildings. It turns out a traditional Thai band was rehearsing for a funeral. They didn't mind me coming and watching them for 20 or 30 minutes and I took this video and some photos. They took a break, exchanged smiles and hand gestures, got me to try the xylophone-looking instrument, and an old guy offered me some Thai whiskey. It was 10 AM.

A girl playing the gongs insisted on taking my picture, so here's that. 

Koh Yao Noi, or That Time I Almost Went Full Castaway

I found myself nearly lost in the jungle, dehydrated and without water, in flip flops, having hiked four or five hours to arrive at this cove on Koh Yao Noi. Four or five hours prior, I had  parked my motorbike at the end of the road on the north west corner of the island, and decided to walk into the jungle and see how far I could get. In flip flops. With one bottle of water. 

I knew there was a resort on the northeast corner, Paradise Resort, with a beautiful beach and I figured I would try and hike into it. The path didn't turn out to be a path. Parts of it were more of an animal trail heavily covered over with bush and logs, parts of it were rubber tree forests and coconut plantations. Some of it was full blown jungle. And at a certain point, I figured walking back to the start would be just as difficult as plugging along. 

What's worse, and I realized this while I was hiking, was that if I were to slip and injure myself in any way, help would have been kilometers and kilometers away, well outside of earshot. And there I was slipping around jungle vines on sweaty, muddy flip flops climbing down trees onto beaches. I remember telling my mom what I had done and knowing full well that this entire thing wasn't the best idea I had ever had. 

I came to three or four completely deserted coves lined with beautiful limestone cliffs, some with sand but most with mangrove swamps. Exactly three times I ran into local people, and exactly three times I was met with a look that said, "I know you're lost, there's no point in saying it. Do you need some water?"

A couple days prior I had met an American living on the island for six months on and off. He happened to be a broadcasting big shot for sports in the States, the kind of guy that drives a dirt bike like it's a normal motorbike and goes base jumping in Bangkok. When I ran into after the jungle hike and told him what I had done, he looked at me in disbelief and laughed. 

Here's to getting lost. Why spend 1000 Baht on a jungle trek when you can do it yourself? 

Along the way I saw two Tucan-looking birds and the biggest tree I have literally ever seen.

Malacca Mystery Sage

This decaying theatre lays in the middle of Malacca, Malaysia, a city most famous as being a UNESCO World Heritage City with its remarkable history as a centre of transaction and trade between innumerable nations and dialects for over five hundred years.

The roof had fallen in long ago, the vegetation had begun to reclaim the building. I couldn't see it from the outside, but the entire floor, front to back, was covered in this pink, purple, yellow and blue powder; perhaps the sizeable Indian community celebrated Holi here.

A man passes by the doors outside, stops and walks straight to me. He was maybe 60 years old, dressed in shabby, soiled clothes, and was sweating more than I was in the 35 C heat.

We stood in the middle of the room for an hour and talked about everything: his banishment from society, his devotion to the Buddhist Goddess of Mercy, how he had studied English literature in England when he was 20 years old, his near homelessness, his paranoia and use of psychiatric drugs. He spoke with the lucidity of someone who spends great deals of time alone, which he said he had. As we talked more and more things devolved into what would surely be described as paranoid schizophrenia, what with police following his every move, secret dealings that fought against him.

He talked about materialism and how he came from the northeast of peninsular Malaysia. He said the Muslims were taking over. He talked about surveillance and an exaggerated police state.

He told one story of how he went to pay the rent for his small apartment room. The man at the desk, he described, carried a subtle but calculated disdain for and superiority over him; his aimless musings on these microlevel aggressions, a miniature world of power was superb.

It was one of those strange moments when the mad make more sense than the sane. Remarkable was that he was completely aware of his diagnosis, maintained a tremendous mastery of English, and decidedly chose to live the way he did, outside of society, in poverty, in simplicity, in thought.

I asked to take a photo of him but he believed I would use the photo to bring the police to him. I didn't press my request.

Borobudur: Indonesia's National Treasure is Privately Owned by a Business

Borobudur, Indonesia's single most visited tourist attraction and an ancient 9th century Buddhist monument, is privately owned by a company and not the national government. 

It's a monolithic structure, the largest Buddhist monument anywhere on Earth. It was constructed in the 9th century by the rulers of the Sailendra dynasty, sitting at the foot of a mountainous plateau. As a foreigner, entry costs $25 USD and around 2.5 million tourists visit the sight every year -- roughly 80% of which are foreigners. 

It's a spectacular sight, no doubt. I happened to think Prambanan was more impressive, but Borobudur, even simply for the sheer size of the monument, strikes awe. 

The rainy season includes February, and the rain started by mid-afternoon. It poured. If you've never seen a true tropical rain, it can literally be like standing in the shower. I tried to hide under a tree with an umbrella, but I soon made a run for a shelter across a field. It happened to be the maintenance workers shed and lounge area. 

When it rains, nearly everything stops. People turn off the road and have a coffee, people bunker down until the rain stops, workers go into their work shed. I walked in and everyone sitting turned a looked at me. I motioned that I needed to use their washroom, and the kindly pointed in the right direction. The rain usually lasted for three or four hours, but there was really no way of knowing when it would stop; it was sort of a natural break in everyone's day, something I began to welcome. 

I came out of the washroom, pulled up a chair and pulled out my cigarettes. Everyone was smoking a cigarette, so it followed that I should probably have a cigarette. Sometimes, or often, there's very little English in Java, but people are so friendly and welcoming that the language barrier doesn't cause much concern. Luckily, one man spoke broken but functional English.

We started chatting, probably about the weather. I remember asking him how long he had worked with the maintenance team of Borobudur and what his job was. He was a grass cutter, and he had worked on the maintenance team for a few years. Before that, he sold souvenirs and knick-knacks outside the gates of Borobudur with the hundred other shops and hawkers. I asked him which job he liked better, and he said that he preferred the grass cutting maintenance job because it offered more job security. Selling souvenirs, he said, was difficult. Most tourists did not want souvenirs and it was hard to keep asking people to buy his things. We sat for over an hour smoking cigarettes and talking.

Somehow it came up in conversation that the sight and grounds of Borobudur are owned by a private company. A business, specifically PT Taman Wisata Candi Borobudur Prambanan Ratu Boko. This means the same company owns Borobudur (Cultural Property #1) and Prambanan (Cultural Property #2).

A private company, the owners of Indonesia's greatest national treasure and the most valued tourist sight in the nation? I quickly did the math. With at least 600 000 foreigner visitors being charged $25 USD per year and a further 2 000 000 Indonesians being charged a smaller amount, the ticket sales on Borobudur alone are well in excess of $20 000 000 USD every year.

That's all fine and well, but what came to mind was that over 10% of Indonesia lives in abject poverty, and many, many more live in near-poverty. In fact, I asked the man how much money he made as a maintenance worker. I believe he said his income was around $4-5 USD per day, but he made a point of saying that the people living in the town of Borobudur and the surrounding area typically made less. The inequality between the rich and the poor in Indonesia is truly staggering, with wealth and opulence restricted to Jakarta and some larger cities while the majority remains sidelined and nearly forgotten. He mentioned when the government of Indonesia bestowed the property to the above company, there had been an agreement that the profits would in part go to benefiting and supporting the communities around Borobudur. He says that has not happened. 

He went on to describe how conditions in the community and the people of Borobudur were less than adequate, people living in poverty and need. With relatively low costs of operation (roughly $1500 USD annual income for a maintenance worker at best), it would appear the company is making a killing on these properties. I felt privileged to see into this man's world for a moment and see what he sees, a glorious symbol of Indonesia's dynasties of old privatized and making profit hand-over-fist with little benefit to him and the people he knows.