Adventures in BAAC, Bangkok Contemporary Artland...

Signs: absent, visible, implied...

The highly recommended hotel I opted for was an enormous distance from the elevated train, when negotiated with 30 kg of luggage in the sweltering high humidity weather. Thank god for friends of friends: Komson Nookiew (is that the most riotous name or what?) went to school with Heidrun Holzfiend and she told me to look him up. He told me to meet him in the new, bombastic guggenheim-like art museum, a really strange creature for this town. He explained the museum lives in a state of suspended animation, except when public relation effforts (such as the current show of contemporary art from Japan) are under way. I told him that in spite of the idiosynchrasis of the place and its administation (or perhaps because of them) I felt, for the first time during my trip, right at home. It was wonderful to be shown around by a native, a successful artist and a friend; we talked shop some, as Komson teaches at a local art school and told me how the art system works in Thailand (or rather, doesn’t). Then he took me to dinner, to a market/food court that had been displaced by encroaching development. We had a wonderful time and a delicious dinner.

Bangkok Overground, Underground & all around

Still Above the Bangkok Fray, so to say...

More Elevated Images

A Thai In... They are all watching ads on the on board tv screens.... ....Or on the luminous billboards in the stations, which introduce the narrative to be seen on screen later on the train

High Above the Bangkok Mad Traffic

The Views on Bangkok Elevated Metro Line

Brief Touchdown in Si Racha, Home of the Eponymous Hot Hot Chili Sauce

Ko Si Chang to Si Racha

After a colorful sea crossing, navigating large, antiquated sea vessels offloading to smaller ones, and a relatively smooth bus trip, I arrived in Bangkok and immediately savored its elevated subway. It is ultramodern, but only serves limited swaths of town; the line to the Airport was supposed to open last December, then in March, but not the March I arrived in apparently. Advertising is ubiquitous, at a level I haven’t seen anywhere else (though I haven’t been to Japan yet): serial luminous billboards on the platform are tied in to the spot running on the in-car screens and entire trains outsides are painted with a single advertiser’s gigantic, kinetic billboard. Personal media chatter, also at a level I haven’t seen anywhere, is also pervasive. Nonetheless, I spent a lot of time on the metro, especially on unfruitful shopping trips and (by default) effective photo safaris. I tried (in vain) to find silk, most of what was on offer was the worst of the t-shirt trade available anywhere and adapted to the local lore: pussy and drugs innuendoes, massproduced “crafts”.