Chinatown

The fact that so many large Metropolitan cities have Chinatown districts shows how widespread the Chinese community is. San Francisco, Bangkok, New York.

Here Chinatown is huge, enormous, gargantuan. I hadn’t realized how much there was to it before I set out to walk through it. Overall I did 6 miles between leaving the Guest House and arriving back. And that was just walking, that doesn’t count the roundtrip from Phra Arthit pier to Memorial Bridge pier by river express. That adds another hour of standing.

From Memorial Bridge, I took a right heading in the direction of Tri Phet Road. Just at the corner of a circular which caught up back on Tri Phet Road, I came across Wat Ratchaburana (also previously known as Wat Ratchaworawiharn or Mea Wat Liab). It’s stupa and temple were originally built by a Merchant called Liab. It’s final rebuild in 1960 gave it the new name Wat Ratchaburana.

Passing the Wat and heading up Tri Phet Road there are so many vendors it’s unbelievable. The first area of vendors seems to sell beads, baubles ribbons and bows and a small number also sell high quality art supplies. I recognized many of the art supply brush and paint names as Western suppliers.

As I walked along there were of course food vendors everywhere. I though the Khaosan night market was a cramped sidewalk area until I started walking around Chinatown. At most, between the store fronts and the street vendors, there’s space for 1 person to walk by comfortably. Meet a stream of people going in both directions and it’s anybody’s guess how to get through them in one piece. On occasion I just stand back and wait for a break in the stream. Especially since I’m larger and carry a fairly hefty backpack.

Next hitting what looked like the motor bike and automobile repair area I figured there were enough vendors here doing mechanical work and repair work to fix every car or bike in the world. How do each of the little vendors make a living when each of their neighbors are offering pretty much the same service? Or maybe they are differentiating themselves per auto type and I just couldn’t tell as I can’t read Thai yet.

I turned onto Charoen Krung Road and began walking East along it. Again there were so many sights, smells and sensations it was a sensory overload. Along the way I happened upon the Guangdong Chinese Temple, an oasis of peace in the midst of madness. It was quiet and peaceful, hard to believe as it is right of a very noisy and bustling street. It’s a fairly typical Chinese temple, many of it’s objects covered in red or painted red, including the walls and columns of the temple itself. Most Chinese temples are really Chapels. A shrine is only a Temple when monks live on the premises, in most Chinese temples they do not, therefore they are Chapels.

As I was walkling out I stopped just before the exit gate, crowned with a pair of lively dragons, looking at my map to make sure I was still fairly on track for where I thought I was going. A small Chinese gentleman came over to offer assistance, but I let him know I was doing ok as far as knowing where I was.

We dropped into conversation about the difference between Chinese temples and Thai temples. I was very happy to listen. He explained he himself was a pharmacist, retired, having worked for Glaxo Smith Kline for 30 years. On retiring he became the pharmacist to the Temple. Apparently each Chinese temple is based around a community who set it up as a Society. The law says that because they set it up as a Society they have to provide hospital facilities on-site. He was the pharmacist for the little hospital attached to this particular temple.

He told me that there are many many such small temples around Chinatown, each owned by a different community of Chinese people. This one in particular was Cantonese, others are based around the regions the local community would be linked to in China.

He talked about his son who lived in Atlanta, Georgia. His son was back in Bangkok because of a medical problem. The little finger on one of his hands had something that was eating away at the muscles and bones. Not cancer, he had had all the test in the world for that. Even the Chinese doctors couldn’t cure him, they’d tried that. He was just hoping his son wouldn’t have to lose part of his hand to try and stop the spread of whatever it was he had.

As I thanked him and prepared to leave he said “some very bad people, bad people out there, be careful”. I was very touched to have met and had learnt so much from this gentleman.

I continued through Chinatown, on one occasion seeing what looked like an old His master’s Voice record player still in it’s plastic and with an old 78 on it’s turntable. I saw what looked like original/old GE kitchen appliances such as blenders and mixers. Jeff told me later that they were reproductions. Apparently someone had worked out that the tourists would love the older stuff and GE were reproducing the older style ones for this market. Oh well.

I also passed by a street ‘Beauty store’ where an elderly Chinese lady was having her face and eyebrows plucked by cotton thread. You’ve got to see it to believe it, but it seems to work.

On another street a policeman was taking a picture of an accident for evidence with his digital camera.

Further along a man with no legs and no wheelchair pulled himself along the sidewalk with his hands.

Taking two right turns took me onto Yaowaraj Road heading back West. I’m convinced you can find everything in the world in Chinatown if you just looked hard enough..

Finally I got back to Memorial Bridge pier and headed home.