{The Elephant Building} …a 40 storey building that was being constructed in the mid 90’s. It was almost done when the Asian financial crisis hit and the construction had to be halted and was never finished. The bottom half of the building is in use but the top half is abandoned. To get to the roof you have to walk up 20 flights of stairs as there’s no working elevator past the first 18 floors. On the roof of this building is a overgrown rooftop garden, a pool covered with algae, a helicopter pad, and the most incredible city view that I’ve ever seen. In every direction there you can see to the horizon, and late at night the lights of Bangkok seem to stretch on forever. - Yuer in Bangkok, Summer 2008 Bangkok swelters like a crater city. If you told me all this heat and wonder was built on a large impact crater that collided seven years ago, that it's the simmering remnants from this meteorite -- zinc, iron, rock and metals that pave these streets -- I'd believe it in a heartbeat. This city is a post-apocalyptic scene, a metropolis racing to the future built on ashes. Crisscrossing between unfamiliar lanes and stalls, I get flashes of scenes from slick scifi visuals like Bebop or Tekken. A future that couldn't quite catch up with itself, a mesh of cultures old and new. The explosion of markets, traffic, people, motorcycles, decrepit buildings from a bygone era, modernized buildings next to stalls held by tarp.
This place is manic. It's coming undone at the seams, and yet, there's something deeply deeply serene and humane about it. I'd probably burst with it, if I could make any sense of it. But, reflections should be saved for later, maybe in front of the computer back at the desk job, or in a handshake with a client, when a sudden and consuming urge for the heat, the city jungle, seizes.
Bangkok is build on memories. With every step I take, I think of the boy and girl who wrote endless emails on the ways of this world. Back in California and New York, she lived vicariously through his journey. His journey could be tracked over the map of Southeast Asia through Internet Cafes. Calls were made. Emails were written. She told him, hey, you go have fun, don't get stuck in Internet Cafes. He would reply, babe, I wouldn't be doing this if this isn't fun. Darling, babe, sweetie, and any other derivatives of affection always sounded so crass before him. She'd actually visibly flinched once overhearing her roommate in college. Because isn't it domestic. Isn't it so...old? Isn't it so...settled?
She called him by a nickname that was by no way a derivative. It was a nickname that he hated because it reminded him of some douche bag in high school, but the name stuck because she was selfish like that, and because he deserved more than babe, darling, sweetie.
Maybe what all great loves need is a great distance and a deadline. In California she paced all over San Francisco and Santa Cruz, met all sorts of hippies who said she looked like Guanyin while she chewed on what stood before them. To go, to not go, to go, to not. He moved too, the most beautiful boy she'd ever met. He'd moved with the audacity to take on continents, devour food and books, endure long hours of bus and trains rides, drank like a dirty expat, and at the end of it all, romanced via Skype at rundown Internet Bars to find her across the world.
He said, I could probably write a guide to the best Internet Cafes across South East Asia. She said "no" to drinks and "no" to new friends in order to cradle a phone instead in New York. She had no idea what love was, but it probably happened sometime during the long email chains on Laos and Jungle Beach.
Maybe what all great loves need is an expiration date. So we raced against time. So we loved against tides. So we broke at the seam, when continents finally took it apart, and maybe that's fine, because in Bangkok City, I see the boy and girl together. She's piling on the street food. She's praying in the temples. She's trekking everywhere, nowhere, pressing memories that will always remain, and will always be loved.