For no particularly good reason, I mostly go out and see the sights on weekends rather than during the week.
This past weekend seemed like a good time to visit Chinatown because it was the kick-off to the Chinese New Year celebration (it’s now the Year of the Rooster, in case you were curious. Specifically, a fire rooster, which sounds like a mid-level Dungeons and Dragons encounter).
The festivities are muted this year in deference to the period of mourning for the country’s late king (who will feature a cameo later in this story), but the city is heavily Chinese, both ethnically and to some extent culturally, so it figured to still be somewhat raucous.
Another excuse was to visit an exhibition by photographer Landry Dunand (this is the exhibit, though the location had moved to a Chinatown gallery), who uses old photographic techniques to capture modern subjects… in this case, Thailand, although he is better known for his work in Afghanistan.
Before heading to Chinatown, though, we ducked in to check out Timemaker, a different exhibition that was on the way.
Finding galleries, or anything else, is an interesting exercise in Bangkok. Even when you have the street address and the full powers of GPS and Google Maps at your disposal, the entries are often around back, in a dark alley, and utterly unmarked. You could well be stepping into someone’s home or the back of a store.
In this case, a street vendor pointed the way, and we went up some rickety stairs to a plywood door and stepped into a rather modern looking gallery and cafe space. A tiny calico cat ran up immediately to greet us loudly.
She was our guide to the exhibition; she circled the room, looking back to make sure we were taking in all the pictures, then she shot up the stairs, meowing all the way, to the next part of the exhibition. When we moved too slowly, the meowing became even louder and more insistent, echoing down the stairs.
She followed us out to say goodbye, then became more interested in chasing a rat. There are plenty of rats to chase.
Along the way to the next gallery (here insert some random amusing miscommunications having to do with the lack of distinction between the liquid l and r phonemes in Thai resulting in a dead-end conversation about who exactly “Gary” was and why we would want to go see him), we hit a wave of incense smoke as thick as a forest fire.
It was drifting out onto the street from the temple of Wat Traimit, the home of the fabled Golden Buddha.
The story behind it is an interesting one but you can get it from Wikipedia. The temple where it lives is now home to a museum also, and overrun with tourists. But with the holiday, many locals were there as well, lighting candles and delivering offerings to the monks.
There is a protocol to entering, which finally drove home the differences in culture to me here.
It’s not just the removal of shoes, which is common enough. Or the requirement that you step over a threshold rather than onto one.
The strange part was what was allowed in these holy places versus what was not.
With a trio of monks standing at a table in front of the statue, observant Thais approached and reverently handed them packages of clothes, food, and other gifts, bowing and paying respect. Yet at the same time, the room was crowded with tourists, taking selfies with the statue and wandering through the middle of what seemed like a moderately significant religious ceremony.
No one thought this was strange. Heck, some of the locals were taking selfies, too. But on the other hand, my date, who had worn shorts, was careful to rent a wrap at the booth (and the degree to which this is engrained is evidenced by the fact that there is a booth out front where you can rent wraps) for that purpose out front and cover her legs, and she was constantly mindful of where the monks were in the room–even if one of them approached her and their clothes accidentally touched, she said, she would feel very bad about it, since such contact was forbidden.
The museum was closed but I found the compound and the protocols interesting enough.
Afterward, we ate at what I was told was a famous restaurant up the street a ways. I couldn’t tell you the name of it–the sign was in Chinese. But there was a very long line so I imagine it was well-known in some circles. The food was good, anyway.
There were street vendors out in front and lining all the roads, selling all kinds of apparently identical foods, but the lines were a little blurred… the restaurant is open to the street and tables spill out onto the sidewalk and beyond. We were seated at the outside edge, which made for excellent people-watching.
There were both locals and tourists crowding the sidewalks and spilling over into the streets. I am not entirely sure what everyone was doing, unless we were all just there looking at each other. There were a lot of women in traditional Chinese dress, both tourists and locals. It just seemed like everyone was out walking, though, spilling out into the road with the cars and taking in the sights.
So Chinatown was busy, but it seemed to be busy just for the sake of busyness. We’d passed a bar with some decent live music on the way there, but when we went back it was packed.
So we ended up in another part of town, at another club… Saxophone. This is also apparently well-known and well-respected as a local jazz club, but they weren’t playing jazz that night. Instead, when we arrived there was a Thai band offering up some pretty decent covers of 60s/70s blues-rock.
Although the place wasn’t completely packed, it was still very busy, and the only seats we could find were right in the band’s lap. It would have been hard to talk even if we both were completely fluent in the same language, which isn’t the case anyway, so for conversation we resorted to typing on our phones and trading notes.
The band started playing a tune that I didn’t recognize and my date typed “I think this song is by the king.”
Funny, I thought. It doesn’t sound like an Elvis tune.
Then it clicked. For some reason, I had been reading up on the late king, Rama IX. He was universally loved and respected here and the mourning period is taken very seriously. Commemorative photos of him are everywhere you turn, and black and white bunting adorns both government and private buildings… even the American embassy.
As I was reading his Wikipedia page, it became clear why. Not only the longest serving Thai king, he was also a man of diverse interests and talents. (Of particular interest to me, he was an accomplished sailor and boat designer. He won a gold medal in the Southeast Asia Peninsular Games in 1967 in sailing.)
Among those was music. In 1950, he started his own jazz band in Bangkok and played live on Friday nights for many years. He even performed with Benny Goodman.
This, I thought, explained much about the people’s affection for the man and continuing sadness at his passing. I tried to imagine Queen Elizabeth, or even Prince Charles, jamming with Benny Goodman. My brain couldn’t process it.
Some of his compositions, then, remain popular on the Bangkok jazz circuits, it seems. The one the band played that night wasn’t half bad.