Living under a bridge - Bangkok, Thailand

We hear someone saying: "That guy lives under a bridge." At once we think of a cardboard box and, huddled inside, a hairy body, its skin dark, wrinkled, hardened by sweat and inclement weather, wrapped in a dirty, crumpled and patched coat, wearing two different boots, its head covered by a torn woolen hat and a frayed scarf caked with dried up drool. Scattered around there are a few bundles of rags, cans half-full of stale food, newspaper pages, three greasy pieces of cutlery, a rusty metallic mug, maybe a bottle of cheap liquor. This mental picture is enriched by the inevitable stench of piss, human and other animals' excrements, syringes, used tissues and condoms. In short, we think of a hobo life. As most of us already know though, this bizarre world can often overturn even the most widespread beliefs.

On my way to the heart of Bangkok business district - where the modern skyscrapers, the elevated skytrain railway and the shopping malls are - at a certain point I have to get off some kind of Siamese vaporetto that sails down the sordid city canals (I'll talk about this in another post), pass under a wide road and come out on the sidewalk at the other side of the street. Right under Saphan Hua Chang (Elephant head bridge), on my right, trapped between ground and roadway like a wedge under a tire, there is a little house. Thirty something square meters removed from the urban architecture and used by the latter as a column in exchange. 

The concrete structure is provided with doors and windows, like any other house, and it's surrounded by a fence that encloses a courtyard. Here there are some plastic chairs, a wooden cable-drum that serves as a table, motorbikes and bicycles, rubbish bins, clothes hanging on clothslines and the usual knick-knacks that are usually hidden in the backyard of a house. 

Inside the room, illuminated by a dingy neon light, a family is enjoying the cool breeze of a fan in front of a TV set broadcasting a muay thai fight.

Who's living there? A road maintenance worker? The supervisor of the vaporetto pier? A family in league with a local politician? Or maybe this is a common practice around here? Honestly I have no idea, but in order to remember that the expressions "living under a bridge" and "being a homeless" don't necessarily refer to the same living conditions I have taken some pictures that I'm posting below.

The house under the bridge

The house courtyard

The back of the house

A different view of the structure

Cinema as a Zen practice

When I'm in Kuala Lumpur my days tend to follow a sequence that rotates and wraps itself up in a gauze of soft invariability. The mental weariness caused by a day of lecturing and its physical counterpart due to some jogging and a couple of push-ups come to meet me in the evening: they take me by the hand and walk me to a movie theater downtown.

Most of the times I'm not really interested in the movie itself: in Asia the multiplex cinemas often feature American and Chinese blockbusters or local stuff that you can't really trust. I rule out by default the ones of the second category and I chose the less toxic title of the first one: it often turns out to be a concoction of action, deafening noise and special effects: the usual bore meant to stimulate the production of adrenaline that ends up making you sink into a state of hypnotic daze instead. As far as I am concerned a good movie depends on: 1) story and director, 2) actors, 3) photography and music. Any other frill can only serve the purpose of concealing the lack of those main ingredients.

However, as I said, what really draws me to the theater has nothing to do with my passion for visual arts: I take care of that with some DVDs when I need to. No, what I really follow enchanted while I'm on the escalator are the notes of a different piper: getting swallowed by that black world scarred by slanting lines of white lights, being vaguely aware of the air-con blow that cools without freezing, reaching the seat next to the aisle, possibly without neighbors, carefully chosen at the box office, stretching out on the armchair - comfortable but not too soft - and letting the hum muffled by the sound-absorbing panels tickle my eardrums during the minutes that lead up to the commercials. When the show (show?) has already started, ignoring without the slightest spot of irritation those who talk and disturb a movie that is not really worth of respect, adjusting to the light air of an awkward drama or of a silly comedy, relaxing my muscles, activating my soul, meditating, slackening the reins of my brain, thinking, being pierced by such a beautiful sentence that it feels as if it was thought by someone else and jotting it down on my phone. Peeking now and then at the deer-like face of the pretty girl who's sitting a few seats away, then feeling ashamed for this fifth grader's instinct and directly jumping to the eighth grade by looking at the legs of a hot chick wearing a jeans miniskirt and high heels, while the tough guy who's sitting next to her is bewildered by a monotonous sequence of fast scenes and deafening sounds. Moistening my lips with a fake pervert air, laughing to myself for this form of self-inflicted sense of humor and while my temple is scratched by yet another sentence - somewhat less philosophical than the previous one - grabbing the phone again and challenging my creativity by trying to write some longshoreman's obscenity with the most poetic verses I can think of.

It's an alternative to Vipassana, Yoga Nidra and Tantra: the experience of a lousy movie as a Zen practice. As it turns out, the ways to reach Nirvana appear to be countless.

Funny signs/1

I often come across some funny signs, billboards, notices and labels. When it happens I always make sure that I don't leave the spot without a photo. I'll post them here a few at a time.

No guys, this is definitely a big NO! (Stuck on the window of a taxi in Bangkok, Thailand)

Park safe (above)...at your own risk (below). (Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia)

A variation of the one above. (Another taxi, still in Bangkok, Thailand)

A smoke-free...temple! (Vientiane, Laos)

Only one ticket per person. You never know, some smart ass might try to buy two, or even three! (Ferry dock, Samui island)

Drunk? Then don't drive! Otherwise... A very graphic sign sponsored by a...brand of beer! (Vientiane, Laos)

A passenger cannot do anything on this bus! Hold on, they forgot to say that you cannot get drunk! Notice the instigation to laying of information - by way of a 4000 baht reward - to pocket 16000 baht, a disproportionate sum (Tourist bus, Thailand)

Click on the photo to enlarge it. At the bottom of the Laotian immigration form you can read: "Our Tax, our Country". A fiscal variation of national pride (Vientiane International Airport, Laos)

You can find more funny signs here

Security vs uncertainty

Photo by star5112 (CC)

A few years ago a friend of mine told me that he had just quit his permanent job at some office and started to work as a freelance. "Freelance?" I answered "You had just started in that field, how are you going to find new customers?"

It turned out that he already had two customers and they probably were the same ones that he was dealing with at the office. As an independent professional he was earning pretty much the same money, working half the time. My friend's revelation helped me to get a clearer understanding of some of the decisions that I had made myself a few years back. The calculations that he had done could have actually been done by anyone else who does the same job. Why then he's the only one I know of who got to that conclusion? Now I know the answer well, as it is in fact the same reason why I also left my job as a permanent employee more that ten years ago: he didn't care about the dose of uncertainty that the new situation would have injected into his life.

I'll leave out on purpose the other - more or less important - factors that might have made my friend feel at ease even without having a stable job and I'll focus on my point of view on the matter instead.

I don't want to be misunderstood: security is a very comfortable mattress on which I would like to lie until the last of my days. Even though it's a privilege for the sake of which I would commit (with my imagination!) the most heinous crimes, what has so far made me opt for a life which is lacking almost any of it is what you have to give up in order to have it in exchange. Piercing day after day with a skewer of repetitiveness, monotony, strict timetables, slowly roast them over a charcoal of minor depressions, of non exciting jobs, of loss of enthusiasm, to finally eat after a few decades the tasteless yet balanced meal of a planned life and hitch-proof old age, is something that rather than fuel me with security gives me vertigo. Actually there is some sort of certainty that I get from it all: the one of aimlessness and depression bouts.

It's not about instigating people to do any stupid thing one can think of as we only live one life. I've done many silly things but none of them was too bad. It seems to me that the concept actually makes sense: if I had three or four lives to live, investing one on a security fund might look like a good idea, however, having been educated to rely on the scientific method and as I still haven't come across any sound proof of a second or a third life, I prefer to handle the first one that I happen to live with great care. Maybe, come to think about it, the opposite approach has more to do with irrationality. And with some kind of phobia.

Of course this is not a criticism to those who made or are about to make different decisions. I got lots of examples of people who prefer to live an extremely secure life that I still hold in high regard. This is the way I am though, and I have learned by swallowing bitter pills and going through painful crises that it's better for me to follow my instinct. This is especially true as I know that fortunately mother nature provided me with a dose of rationality and common sense big enough to smooth the sharpest corners and to plane the most irregular surfaces of my impulsive side. Over the years my instinct has proven to be trustworthy. Obviously there are ups and downs, but if I think of what was crossing my mind, stretching my nerves and kicking my soul about(*) on some sleepless night only a few years ago, the issues that I am faced with now make me smile.

After all we're just talking about living: the only occupation for which everybody is born with the necessary prerequisites.

(*) I know, I said that I am a supporter of the scientific method and then I've mentioned the soul. Actually I have never been too good at living a life without contradictions...

Indiscriminate parking - Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

There is a construction site in downtown Kuala Lumpur, just a few meters from the Petronas Towers: they are building another one of those high rise buildings. The site has taken up the old sidewalk and the supervisors decided to build a temporary one using some stakes, a thin rope and some refracting pads, occupying part of the traffic lane. The sidewalk is used by a high number of people who go to work and tourists on their way to the towers.

A few days ago an expert in creative parking took advantage of this space, safely screened from the traffic and conveniently located next to the construction site -  and incredibly empty! - to park his little truck. As a consequence the pedestrians were forced to walk in single file (often in two single files, one for each direction).

I couldn't help taking a few photos.

Indiscriminate parking

A lady is forced to crouch under the rope and walk close to the cars

Pedestrians walking in single file

Vulture-like place - Bangkok, Thailand

Photo by adaptorplug (CC)

One can say that every bad place is bad in its own way and when it comes to bad places Bangkok offer is one of the widest worldwide. Take the movie The Hangover part II for instance, which is based here: even though it's filled with unlikely situations it still provides a very realistic - often real - panorama of decadent joints.
Although I have been regularly coming to Bangkok for ten years I still need the assistance of M. - a friend of mine who is just a tourist, an occasional visitor - to find one that can still surprise me. I'ts not only about the bars with the theme dressed up girls, the ping pong show joints, the ladyboy cabarets, the go-go bars, the erotic massage parlors, the disco-pubs and the after-hour clubs with the free lance hookers. Not only Patpong, Nana Plaza and Soi Cowboy then...in Bangkok you can also find stuff like this.
As soon as I get in I shudder as one does when coming across something that charms us just as it revolts us. In a way it could fit into the last of the categories listed above, as the girls don't work for the owner of the bar, or maybe they do it but just indirectly, without getting a wage or instructions and orders. However, some of the peculiar features of the place and the dynamics of the social relations suggest to create a dedicated category in order to classify it.
Some details - the table, the movements and the sober appearance of the waiters - remind of some Bavarian taverns. The counter could be the one of a town festival, with a drink list hanging from the wall behind the panting and vaguely improvised bartenders. The widespread use of wood, tiles, neon lights and cheesy pictures of famous sites (the leaning tower of Pisa, the Coleseum, the Arc de Triomphe) bring back to mind some Italian bars of the '60s and the '70s. The ingredient that interrupts this journey of the imagination through comparisons with faraway places is obviously the presence of dozens of women. Some of them have already lived all the days of their splendor but the number of pretty and young ones - according to M. - has increased since the last time he was here.
The air is leaden with a slightly dismal atmosphere, like a cattle market in lean times. "It's a vulture-like place", is M.'s comment, and even if you are not familiar with the expression as soon as you set a foot in here you understand its meaning straight away.
Most of the ladies are arranged in a semicircle, shoulder to shoulder, leaning against the walls or the furniture of the half of the room that faces the entrance. They are wearing office or evening dresses, they have nice hairstyles and are soberly made up, no vulgar or pornographic details, the hottest ones are hot in a rather discreet way. Only few of them sit at the tables scattered around or at the huge counter that curves at the center of the hall. This is where the majority of the customers are, many of them visibly bored, almost disinterested, sipping beer, chatting with friends or looking around, not necessarily at the women.
What a difference between this place and the traditional venues of the Thai sex industry! Decadence here is a matter of design more than of ethics. The indecent element is missing and the libido as well, disappeared with the exaggerated theatricality, the vulgar colors, the blinding lights and the deafening sounds. Now and then an invisible DJ plays some songs but for interminable minutes the only soundtrack of this grotesque movie is the hum, the clincking of glasses, the squeaking of stools, the background noise of a nigthclub at closing time, when the lights are switched on and the last song fades away while the patrons still linger inside.
The ladies keep trying to make eye contact. Most of the time the customers give a hint of a smile and then look away. Or they look away without even the lenitive effect of the faint smile. Probably this is only something that I feel for them though: the girls seem to be already accustomed to this kind of reaction.
Once in a while a man calls one of them. A little startled she - and sometimes also the one that stands next to her - answers: "Who, me?". And then she walks the five or six meters that separate her from what turns out to be more than a customer: he's a firefighter in a building ablaze, a Saint Bernard at the site of an avalanche, a lifeguard in the rough sea. In short, he's some kind of savior. With this pace, though, only 5% of them will be saved: they are too many and too little seems to be the attention they manage to attract. The remaining 95% will have to go back home and hold on to their poor little daily job, if they have one. As we will learn later on through a friend of M.'s, in fact, most of these part-time employees of the sex industry have very common occupations and the younger ones often turn out to be students.
The Japanese customers seem to know something that the others don't: when they call a girl, she comes over and starts to talk their language. A very enterprising approach indeed.
Once we've finished our beers, before leaving we go to the toilet, a filthy hole in the basement in line with the style of the place. A rusty gutter along the tiled wall serves as a urinar. Next to it there are two of those disgusting Asian cubbyholes for the ladies. The customers have to pay five baht per entry but with twenty baht you have unlimited access for the whole night. In order for the investment to be profitable one needs to go to the lavatory more than four times: who can resist in here for so long? Another tip will also disclose the secret that shrouds those couples that instead of walking down to the underworld of the pig pens climb the stairs in the opposite direction: upstairs there is a cheap by-the-hour hotel where more or less obscene transactions are carried out.
We leave the place and as soon as we're outside Bangkok slaps us with a blow of heat, humidity, smells and noise which suddenly delivers us from that weird torpor that had mantled us. It's as if the vulture-like place had narcotized us. Perhaps we were just stunned but it is also possible that it was another spell of a city endowed with mysterious powers.
After all they call it City of Angels: the metaphysic ingredient must be hidden somewhere.

KL fragments - Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

- An ad sign at Suria-KLCC reads: "Download tomorrow's edition of the New Strait Times today at 9pm!" Tomorrow's news today at 9pm? Those guys are not journalists, they're fortune tellers! It might not be a great newspaper but its horoscope section must not be bad at all...

- Does a real VIP need to have a "VIP" sticker attached to the windscreen of his car?

- I come back to KL two months after the last time I was here and: a popular fitness club is closed, my favorite Cantonese restaurant is closed and replaced by a Taiwanese dessert place, a very popular backpackers lodge has closed down, the Italian restaurant where I used to buy my take-away pizzas is closed for renovation, other bars and restaurants in Bukit Bintang don't exist anymore, and the same thing happened to some shops in the shopping malls downtown. This is not dynamism...this is cheating!

- A sign stuck to the window of the KLIA express train reads: "Thanks for keeping your feet and luggage off the seat" How nice, they don't forbid it...they just thank you for not doing it! You're welcome!

- Typical life cycle phases of a restaurant at Changkat Bukit Bintang: 1. simple and full; 2. closed for renovation works; 3. fancy and half-empty with a pushy and annoying waiter chasing customers on the sidewalk; 4. closed for good.

- Illegal street vendors at Bukit Bintang laugh and help each other with their bags when they are chased by the police. When I saw a similar scene at Rialto bridge in Venice the fugitives were panicking and the policemen were confiscating their goods.

- Two models are posing behind a shop window at Suria-KLCC. People are taking turns to take pictures of those beauties. I take pictures of them all.

- The waiters of a Jalan Alor restaurant wear plastic bags on their heads to protect themselves from the rain.

- Dozens of immigrants hang around Bukit Bintang and Jalan Alor selling folding wooden baskets. It's a mistery.

- When asked by the organizers of the modeling contest what she would like to change about herself, one of the girls answers that she has already identified and removed an unwanted aspect of her character. Being the this the only one that she had one should deduce that there aren't any others left, which means that she basically is a perfect person.

- A taxi driver tells me that some cabs at night are driven by part time, improvised drivers on the hunt for tourists to rip off. He heard one of them boasting about charging an American sailor 300 dollars to go from KLCC to a hotel nearby, by taking a long, obviously unasked detour around the state of Selangor. Another one confided to my driver that he makes 1000 ringgit a day on average, when this guy, working 10 hours a day, can barely make 100. And because of few people like this KL taxi drivers (including himself) have the reputation of cheaters among foreign tourists.