Bangkok again

Once again for this year I went to Bangkok, in July, for management training. As always, the trainings are quite good, and own follow-up should be done more consequently. Upon this opportunity, I had extended the trip to the weekend, and again I went to the shopping centers, in order to cut the two pairs of jeans that last time they did not cut enough, and to eat the sweet wafer with cream upstairs in the MBK mall. Once again, it was great to experience the convenience of this city and to explore it a bit with the colleagues. Right upon arrival we dashed into a small street food alley off Soi Phipat, Silom Road, to get the best vegetarian dish fried since I returned to Asia in 2010. The high-tech coffee from a small nicely-done shop completed a great lunch. After long days of training the meeting point for the colleagues from Bangkok is always the Bangrak Café. In the evenings we had great dinners and spent the time discussing work and life issues.

key staffs and management from offices all over the region during our management training

colleagues at the Bangrak Café

a Bangkok style eatery in the business district, packed despite its sheer size

small signs…in a region where it is most needed, awareness for environmental issues is increasing

dinner at Papa John, where the Chef of a famous hotel in the city cooks for his own guests in the evening hours

a shrine in front of the Marriott Hotel

my favorite apartment tower in Bangkok - I imagine the condo on the top-floor

another apartment building in the vertical fauna of …

… this urban jungle….

…with its somehow "very Thai" and unique mode of finding expressions for life.

I felt that somehow I have an intimate relationship to the city, because it is the place with which it all had began - meanwhile more than 10 years ago. Similar to what my friend Chris from Ho Chi Minh City had once expressed, Don Mueang, the old airport, was the gate through which we had both (separately) entered a kind of new, global lifestyle, from the save haven of our small, German, well-protected, backyard-like world, to discovering new parts of the globe, the secrets and realities of Southeast Asia and concepts that have thus far been beyond our imagination. Crossing Lumphini Park and the urban canyons along Sukhumvit Road by skytrain, the feeling is almost the same as it was many years ago when I was browsing the streets of Bangkok for the fist time. The city has never and will probably never stop to impress me, both in positive and negative ways. There is this vibe, this mega-urbanity, this melting pot of people, lifestyles, cultures, sub-cultures, so many different milieus, all contrasted by social inequalities. This endless stream of faces - and the imaginations about the people and lives behind them - sometimes one believes to understand more, sometimes less. Moving around, there is this great convenience, this adventure, of having the whole world in one huge city, a city that somehow stands for the developments of a whole region that has eventually become our point of interest and expertise. But there is not only fascination for Bangkok, one also feels the hostility of it, its anonymity, its freaks, it concrete veins, its dirt, pollution, crime and its human dramas. There is always this slight bit of fear, of getting lost in such huge, artificial and foreign environment. Traveling within this city, reflecting on it, is a big trip by itself, in this crazy world, where we have made it from ants on our home countries soils to getting taken off in robot insects...

a nice coffee shop - fusion design also here: old wooden chairs that are for some reason that I haven't found out about yet iconic in Indochina and modern polished concrete walls…something I would like to venture into, in several respects

enjoying long searches and the atmosphere in one of the city's most well-assorted bookshops…with stunning views from the mall's windows into temples and business districts

at Moji's apartment

airports and environmentalism

After many years I met Moji whom I had met for the first time when this blog was started back in 2006 - more than five years ago. In fact, the keep-in-touch-and-share-stories-and-photos-tool has meanwhile become more of a diary. It is a public expression of important aspects of my life throughout the years. I am not even sure how many of my friends read it, how many people elsewhere, who do not even know who I am, might stumble across one or the other episode. Today I get 2466 page views displayed, many of them will be my own ones. This post is the 78^th. At the beginning it was more of a travel blog. But I probably knew that it was going to be a blog which would be lasting for longer. That the travels have become the passion of my life and even an occupation. That life has become the way, and going far has become a way of life. GO FAR, JUST THINK WHAT YOU WANT is what a lovely friend texted me last night that I had spent at home, from another far off shore. She got right to the heart of it. I have always been thinking what I want, and mostly also expressing it, often on this very platform. This is maybe a reason why I am not easy to deal with people. Why I do not like the majority of people, but rather select carefully who is a friend and who not. The blog has become a central form of expression, always between the pure truth and a slight caution for the things said. It is not entirely anonymous and in a way again it is. A friend had done an interview with me on it, or rather on the activity of blogging. I had spent the night in Moji's apartment in Tawinthao, and we had a great lunch at one of the malls in the outskirts. It was such great Thai fusion cuisine in a chic chain restaurant of which I do not remember the name, and that also served excellent organic lemonade. Rushed back to Silom area through heavy traffic, on motorbikes and taxis and sky trains, through sheer endless roads in order to pick up the baggage at the hotel and leave to the airport on time.

Re-reading the first post that was published on this blog, I understand, that I am still far from where I want to go. To all my friends, thank you for accompanying me on my way!