A Sojourn in Thailand by Karen Connelly
Bangkok always comes to you slowly, languidly, but its sprawling outskirts gradually transform into a taloned, grinning creature with an appetite for money and human time. I've grown used to the dimensions of Denchai, the familiar streets of Chiang Mai, the cotton clothes and rubber thongs of small towns. The pace of the city always surprises me. Slums trip into office buildings, apologizing with flimsy fences; markets wander into streets, shopping centres into dirty sky. Concrete edges elbow ancient temples, nudge palaces for room to grow, expand, swallow up the old to spit out the new. I dig through my knapsack for what's left of my wristwatch. The crystal is cracked and the second hand doesn't work, but it tells me the time: four-thirty. The city is still two hours away, yawning in the dark.
No comments:
Post a Comment