Thread | Brutkey

Mystery Babylon
@erosdiscordia@onycha.monster

Life lately.

#Bangkok

Outside Siam Paragon Mall at night. It's the central BTS SkyTrain transfer point, as well as the nexus of a chain of 3-4 malls. And a busy intersection. Two lines of the SkyTrain are near the top as cement overpasses. The colorful glass front of Paragon Mall featuring a Prada store is in the center. At the bottom is Sukhumvit Road, with a melee of cars, taxis, and motorbikes.

Two purple lotus flowers and their bright green leaves, in a water barrel on the sidewalk.

MBK Center Mall interior. It's a seven-story mall and this is the central atrium. Escalators criss-cross among teal balconies floors, with light from a glass roof.

Two spirit houses outside a cafe. They're white and gold mini-temples on pedestals, lots of Thai buildings have them.

Mystery Babylon
@erosdiscordia@onycha.monster

I do wanna point out, all the mall shots that are likely to appear in the next few weeks and months aren't me shopping. The main string of malls on Sukhumvit are usually steps from various major SkyTrain stations. Plus they have cheap food courts.

Before I got to Bangkok, I read about the food courts and I was like, why the fuck would you go to a mall just to eat at the food court?

But it's not like America, where getting to a mall is kind of an effort, and so the food there is a bit overpriced. Here, you can walk half a mile down the main road while inside a long chain of malls, and literally hundreds of restaurants and food stalls within them are in competition to be both cheap and actually good food.

Better know exactly what you're trying to find, though. Because just wandering in to any one of these places is an invitation to get seriously lost. I'd say the average American mall is any one of the floors in these buildings. And there are a lot of floors. And a lot of buildings.

Mystery Babylon
@erosdiscordia@onycha.monster

Oh, and I gotta say one more thing to explain the malls here.

Don't visualize the typical American mall, with like 3-4 anchor department stores and a bunch of little places, and maybe a movie theater, and the whole thing has that tenuous, trying-to-stay-afloat tenseness.

Try to mentally combine a metro station, the Mall Of America, a flea market, the food avenue of a carnival, a corporate office block, a midrange hotel, and throw in something special like an ice rink or a bowling alley. And pack it full of people of all races and nationalities. And phone cases, soooo many phone cases.

Mystery Babylon
@erosdiscordia@onycha.monster

And just when you've lost that head-in-a-blender feeling, and think you have it all sorted out, picture a gigantic shrimp-snail.

An absolutely enormous, hot-pink hanging sculpture in the atrium of a multi-story mall, of what looks like a wily shrimp dancing out of a conch shell, surrounded by huge hanging sculptures of dark blue flowers. I don't know, man. Seeing this didn't help my jet lag.

Mystery Babylon
@erosdiscordia@onycha.monster

Many things in Bangkok are a perfect balance of "What the fuck" and "Yes, of course."