The Dark Side of Bangkok

From spending one weekend in Bangkok, I have come to realise that this is a city with two faces. One face encompasses the light tourist fare, the temples and the markets. The other is the seedy underbelly that is both expected yet still shocking. 

My dad loves to say, 'Man who walks through turnstile sideways is going to Bangkok.' Well last night I got Bangkoked pretty hard. 

And I'm not just talking about getting drunk, dancing till the early hours and seeing girls perform some very sad acts. All that happened, of course, but I also witnessed a very savage and frightening bashing on Khao San Road.

Khao San Road is the backpacking mecca of South-East Asia. It's a street lined with hippies, second-hand book stores, pad thai vendors, and pubs. Here are two photos that I think sum up my Khao San Road experience:

A giant dog riding a moped

Me with a collection of empties

Look like fun, right? It is. But last night at 6am when all the bars had finally shut, me and my two Canadian friends were walking down Khao San Road back to our hostels when we stumbled upon a huge commotion. A tourist guy was being chased by a gang of about 5-6 locals. I don't know what he did to provoke them but they started punching his face, 5 on 1, and he was getting thrown on to the ground and up against shop windows. The gang smashed a plastic chair over his face so hard that the chair snapped in half. He then stumbled across the road towards me and I could barely see his face from all the blood. That's when they smashed the other half of the plastic chair into his face about a metre away from me. It was the most violent thing I have ever seen in real life. I didn't know what to do besides keep away. I felt so bad for the guy but I also knew that if I went to help him the gang would turn on me as well. Even the local street cleaners were visibly disturbed. We kept walking but I could tell that they were still beating on him even when he had been down for a while. I don't know if they stopped before killing him.

I'm not sure how often this kind of violence happens on these streets but I know that I never want to see anything like it again. It was also a reminder to stay alert at all times, especially when drinking. I had already been alert to avoid any anti-government protests as a some protesters had been bombed the day I landed in Bangkok.

I'm making Bangkok sound horrific but I actually did get to see the nice side of the city as well. I visited the Grand Palace, the Emerald Buddha, the Temple of the Reclining Buddha, and the floating markets.

The Floating Markets

Tourist shot at the floating markets

The floating markets were cool but actually pretty boring. I visited a more interesting market that was situated along a train line. The local vendors would lay out all their produce up to the tracks and then when a train comes they pack it all away and put their umbrellas down, only to lay it all back out and pop their umbrellas back up when the train passes. How unnecessarily difficult does that sound? Who was the genius that decided to put a market over a working train line?

Train-track Market

So those are the two faces of Bangkok. I'm now leaving the city a much more alert and safety-conscious traveller. But I'm also super relaxed from all the massages I've been getting, so that's a plus.

Next stop: Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam