Neighborhood Sois - Saturday, August 21, 2010

The plan this weekend was to go to Vinamek Palace in the Dusit area of Bangkok. This area has a lot of government buildings from the late 1800s and Vinamek Palace is of special interest because it is made almost entirely of teak. But, there were political protests planned for this weekend in that area so I decided to postpone. There wasn't any risk of violence – like in April and May of this year – but traffic in Bangkok is never good and with road closings planned in that area, traffic would have been a nightmare. (In case you’re interested, the protests have to do with the Preah Vihear temple, which is on the border between Thailand and Cambodia. The Cambodian government has recently made moves to claim the temple as its own, while the Thai government feels strongly that it belongs to Thailand. The “red shirts” – who oppose the current Thai government – were planning to stage protests to force the Thai government to do more to resolve this issue in Thailand’s favor.)

So, rather than head off into that, I decided to spend an afternoon exploring the sois (streets) in and around my neighborhood. I borrowed a bicycle from the front desk, since I had seen other people doing that, figuring that would enable me to cover a lot more ground. (Getting the bicycle was an adventure in itself. They brought one around for me, but the seat was way too low – I’m much taller than most Thais. I tried to make that clear to the fellow who had brought the bicycle, since he didn’t speak English and I haven’t yet learned the words for “too low.” But I guess my pantomime skills aren’t all they could be because he road off and came back with a second bicycle, with an equally low seat. Eventually, I got him to just bring me a wrench and raised the seat myself.)

There are large roads that run through Bangkok – in my neighborhood, the main streets are Sukhumvit and Asoke. Off these main roads run a maze of smaller streets – called sois. The odd-numbered sois are on the north side of Suhkuhmvit and the even-numbered ones on the south. The larger sois have names but many do not – just numbers. Some of the sois connect to other sois, but others just dead-end – either the soi itself just stops or it comes to a stop at a canal. But with a little backtracking every now and again, I was able to wind my way around for quite a distance.

A lot of foreigners on assignment and expatriates live in this part of Bangkok. The neighborohood is definitely a jumble. In my neighborhood, sois 3, 5, and 7 are strongly Muslim – you see many women in burqas in the supermarket. But cross Sukhumvit and go down sois 12 and 16 and there are good French restaurants that cater to the “ladies who lunch” set. Soi 18 has a Lexus dealer on the corner and, 20 yards away, a low-rent Chinese noodle shop where we often go for lunch. Sois 23 and 31 have a lot of neighborhood restaurants – mostly Thai, but also Italian and Indian. Sois 49, 51, and 53 are more up-market, with lots of antique and furniture stores. By the time you get to Soi 55, you have crossed into the Thong Lor neighborhood, which has a strong Japanese presence.

The sois are where much of the smaller-scale, personal life of Bangkok happens. And the homes are on the sois are smaller and individual – once you get off the main drags, the large, condo/apartment towers end and you see individual homes set back from the soi behind large gardens.

At one point, I ended up on a soi that dead-ended into a Buddhist temple. Very ornate and complete with monks in saffron robes.

The street was just an average neighborhood street... but, in true Thai fashion, there was retail everywhere.

I am convinced that no one in Thailand has a kitchen in their home – there are small restaurants and street stalls everywhere – and someone has to be eating all that food.