Bangkok

A reflection on a journey taken a while back to the other side of the planet.

   Bangkok at last!  I can't believe it, I'm actually on the oppisite side of the planet in one of the most exotic cities one can imagine.  I am tired and jet-lagged.  I have flown into another day and another world.  This city is immense.  Sprawling and deep.  Deep with mystery and intrigue.  It is humid, wet, and dangerous.  Wet and humid like the back of a slithering python.  Seductive like the hypnotizing unblinking eye of the dragon.  Danger lurks here.  I can see it peering out the oriental eyes of the drivers and jetway clerks and cabbies like smoke hiding a secret adjenda.  It lurks in the headlights of a million cars and on the slick, wet streets.  I can smell it in the coy gaze of Thai women, if one can smell a gaze.  I can sense danger in the sudden beating of my heart.  It is hot.  And it smells of sex and smuggling.  

   Scent defines Bangkok.  Not sight.  Sight defines Hong Kong, or San Francisco.  The smell of Bangkok is one that a person never forgets.  That and the moistness that prevades everything and lends a softness to the din.  The humidity is the matrix upon which the mirids of exotic aromas curl and blend like oil on a canvas painted by Gauguin.  The air is strong and heavy and opens up the pores.  It lies low.  Its like heavy cream, or fine silk, or dark beer.  The city pulses under this humid blanket, this hot house and the aromas radiate upward to fill the air.  It stifiles you and yet frees you at the same time.  

   4 or 5 joss sticks burn from the tiny Buddhist shrine next to the doorman's station right outside the door of the Orental Hotel at 3 am.  I'm awake.  In the distance silent lightning flashes.  Across the street a billboard advertizes the latest kung fu movie and I feel I'm in a re-make of Apocolipse Now.  

   The joss sticks burn from shrines which seem to be in every shop and street corner, waifting through the alleys.  The air is always filled with their stickey, sweet, acrid odor.  On street corners the fish vendors hawk their catch.  Everywhere are food carts and stalls, grilling strips of pork and fish skewered upon thin sharp sticks.  Their savory smoke blends with the choaking diesel from a million cars and trucks.  

   Beautiful thai women stalk me with their eyes like a tiger stalking dic dic.  

   The rain, the garbage, the joss, the fish and the sweat blend to paint the element of Bankok-the element of scent.