Navigating The Bangkok Night

The Bangkok Night is so vast and diverse, spread across so many different districts of this gigantic Asian metropolis with so many bars, clubs, lounges, discos, KTVs, snooker places, “Entertainment Complexes,” music venues, street stalls, night markets, “special services” massage places, cinemas and shopping centers, from tiny to huge, from low-end and very cheap to high-end and very expensive, that it is actually impossible for any one person to physically know the sum total of what’s there.

Add to this nighttime universe a very high rate of change, endless transmutation and transformation, a general all around subatomic particle velocity level approaching warp speed, and by the time any one person gets from one end of the Bangkok Night to the other, many of the bits they already travelled through have become something else or no longer exist. Then blend in the millions of souls passing through this transitory and wonderous infinity, millions of people from Thailand, Southeast Asia, Northeast Asia, India, Pakistan, Central Asia, Russia, the Middle East, Europe, Africa, North America, Australia.

Young, old, rich, poor, good, bad, stylish, successful and wretched all thrown on stage together. Light them up with billions of twinkly lights, millions of neon signs, endless music tracks, extreme diversity of character, faces, costumes, an endless supply of instantly available spicy food, sex and general all-around “monkey business,” and you end up with a bewildering and overwhelming chaos of colliding humanity and activity almost impossible for any one person to comprehend.

By Chris Coles*

But while the complete “reality” of the Bangkok Night and the people who inhabit it can never be completely known, there are a few souls demented and obsessive enough to take the enormity of what’s there and try to distill it into books, music, paintings and movies. Writers like Christopher G. Moore, John Burdett, Jake Needham and Stephen Leather. Musicians and filmmakers like Thaitanium, Smith Timsawit, the Pang Brothers and artists such as myself.

Using whatever metaphors, tricks, skills and vision we can summon up, we grab the bits we’re able to get our hands on and try to transform them into not an exact replica of the actual Bangkok Night but another version shaped by vision and imagination.

We each look at the Bangkok Night through our own personal and idiosyncratic lens, in my own case a Noir lens inherited from the German Expressionists, and through this lens or point of view, the infinity and chaos of the Bangkok Night is transformed into a series of metaphors, dramas, stories and images.

For instance, I often imagine the Bangkok Night to be a kind of gigantic and beautiful coral reef, containing a vast variety of color and illumination as well as darkness and shadow. Populated by all sorts of fish, mollusks and strange creatures, swimming alone or in groups, crawling here and there, hiding, waiting, playing, attacking, eating, shitting, sleeping and having sex. All of them either predators or prey, sometimes both. Seeking to devour, trying to avoid being devoured, struggling to survive and breed, constantly on the lookout in the midst of an ever-shifting set of circumstances and relationships, surrounded by danger, bad intention and blind instinct.

Swimming in this imaginary coral reef, through my imaginary noir lens, I see a Japanese business guy, maybe a manager at a Toyota factory on the Eastern Seaboard, and he’s transformed into a highly nutritious, slow-moving fish surrounded by adorable and cuddly KTV hostess girls, sort of like a school of cheerful but deadly piranha, who nibble at his pockets and flesh until, in a moment almost too short to notice, all his money is suddenly gone.

Or a young farang tourist guy swimming slowly to and fro like a medium sized shark, confident and relaxed, thinking he’s at the top of the coral reef’s food chain. But then the sexy and attractive bargirl fish he was about to devour turns out to be a dangerous jellyfish with long and sticky tentacles.

In the Darwnistic universe of the coral reef, the roles of prey and predator constantly shift in a never-ending struggle for food, sex and survival. Disguise, ingenuity, trickery, ambush, sudden attack, sound effects, movement, decoration, enticement, seduction, coloration, movement are all part of the game.

At one moment, the German sex tourist is a high income 1st world predator fish swimming happily around the section of the reef called Soi Cowboy, devouring whatever bargirl fish he sees and wants. But after he dies and is re-incarnated, he comes back to Soi Cowboy as a homeless and penniless Soi Dog, condemned to a frustrating lifetime of wading through the shallows, surrounded by sexy and beautiful bargirl fish who he can no longer touch or consume.

A naïve and inexperienced fish with way too many credit cards arrives at the reef on a current from Australia, happily swimming to and fro, smiling and saying hello to all the other fish. SNAP … what he thought was just a rock turns out to be a curvy and carnivourous mollusk … JACKPOT and another week of life guaranteed!

And finally one of the Ancient Fish who’s been swimming around the reef it seems like forever, tough enough to survive, experienced enough to know when to strike, when to hide. Lived a full life, done everything he wanted to do and ready to die without regret. Safe from all the other fish because his skin is too thick and his flesh too old.

* Don’t miss Chris Coles’ Navigating the Bangkok Noir art show opening on December 11th at Liam’s Gallery, Buddha Hill, Pattaya/Jomtien.





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December 8, 2009 | Filed Under Culture & Arts, Culture Shock, Nightlife & Entertainment 

Comments

5 Responses to “Navigating The Bangkok Night”

  1. Jarrett on December 9th, 2009 12.33 pm

    For a coral reef, Bangkok sure has a lot of whores.

  2. whoopla on December 9th, 2009 4.10 pm

    Urban warfare – Chris forgot to include the gangs of katoeys that now roam lower Sukhumvit with tasers … watch out when you are forced through a crowd of these lovely gentlemen of the night …

  3. Chris on December 9th, 2009 5.16 pm

    Ah, yes, the deadly school of ladyboy taser/pickpocket fish swimning around in the lower Suk area of the reef … safest thing for scuba diving humans is to swim elsewhere …

    http://bangkok-noir.blogspot.com/2008_01_01_archive.html

  4. Young, old, rich, poor, good, bad, stylish, successful and wretched on December 10th, 2009 11.58 am

    [...] you can try to comprehend by reading more here or, if you are in Thailand, visiting [...]

  5. Steve on December 11th, 2009 1.50 am

    Maybe preferable to swim in the quieter backwater areas of Bangkok … hmmm, can’t think of any. Just remember then that most of us are very small and brightly colored (very noticeable) fish in a huge and dangerous sea.

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