On my way along my soi (road) yesterday I spotted this vendor who'd stopped for a snack just down from my apartment.I'm particularly fond of the contents of this a rot khen, (push cart) because its contents speak to me in my previous life as a scultptor. Not only that, much of my work focused on the body, often the pregnant body, and I would've killed to have made some kind of installation with those bulbous baskets. Or to learn to make them.
The canopy behind the cart and customer hide a building site (makes it look like a big Christo) and that explains why the 'restaurants' have sprung up in the street here. Almost out of view on the right, behind the white van, is a table with food for purchase for the workers on the site.
The peddlers push the carts around the streets, and they sell anything and everything (not at the same time) and it's a mystery how the customers know when to expect the carts in their street. I suppose it's because so much life is lived outside here that the people just see him...
11 comments:
What a fascinating place you live in. It must be so inspiring too.
Ahhhhh...Baskets [takes a deep sniff]. I used to be a basketmaker, and I think I harbour secret ambitions to run a basket shop. A push cart would be fine. Ahhhhhh...
That's a great photo JJ, I love your posts about Bangkok they are so colourful, I've never been there but I hope to go next year!
What a wonderful image - very evocative :o)
My only view is of grey skies and wind-blown trees at the moment!
I love those too JJ - and the ones that sell the brushes!!
C x
At least for my soi, I can tell you how the construction workers who live in a temporary 'ghetto'-style arrangement on the site around the corner from my apartment block know that the food is coming --
Every morning since the construction started about three months ago, every morning between 5:30 and 5:40, this truck trundles along past my flat (which is nice and low on the 5th floor, so we can hear everything from the soi), with a loudhailer announcing in Thai:
"The food is coming...we have many curries...we have delicious food...come get the curries..." and so on.
This truck has become my new alarm clock, rather than my mobile, which I used to set at 6am in order to get my older kids ready for their 6:45am schoolbus. Now, the bloody truck wakes me up and I just lie in bed a few extra minutes, wondering if someday I should bother quickly to throw on clothes and run on down there to snap up some of this vendor's "delicious food". They've always moved on by more "civilised" morning hours...perhaps to your soi, JJ! :)
Everything about this post is fascinating. I am particularly fascinated about your past as sculptor(ess)! Got any pictures of your pregnant women work?
So much is captured in that photo. Keep them coming!
Cor! You don't see traffic like that round my neck of the woods!
I love your photos.
They're fascinating:-)
x
Debs, thank you. It is although sometimes it's rather easy to think it's normal.
Leigh, YOU USED TO BE A BASKET MAKER? OMG. How exciting - I would love to have done some of that.
Yvonne, thank you. If you come (and I'm still here) let me know. It is a fab place.
Karen, thank you and sorry. You can't imagine how I sometimes lust for grey skies and wind-blown. trees. He he.
Carol, yep, the brush man is fab too.
Lyle, Welcome. 25 floors up I can't hear the announcements! But I can see down into the ghetto style living arrangements. (Are you Lyle from BWWG?)
Pacha, thanks honey. Watch this space then.
SueG, thank you. I do like posting the Thai pictures. I don't do it too often as this blog doesn't really purport to be a 'Living in Thailand' blog. Still it's my blog - I guess I can do it if I want, eh?
Jon, I do have to remind myself that it isn't normal (for back home)
Lane, thank you. I'll post some more soon.
JJx
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