Bangkok's New Faces
Thailand's capital for more than 200 years, Bangkok is reinventing itself once more as a new wave of immigrant innovators help to reshape the face of their adopted home
The Architect
Bangkok is home to a remarkable 21 percent of Thailand's population. Out of a total kingdom of 69 million people, more than one out of every five lives in the capital.
“Bangkok isn't really a city though, for me it's like a series of interconnected towns,” says Bangkok-based Canadian architect Luke Yeung, as we sit enjoying a flat white in the cafe downstairs from his studio. The baristas at the Ink & Lion are in the throes of setting up a new graphic illustration exhibition called 'High On You' by artist Orn Thongthai, opening later in the evening. One of them features the words 'I Hate You', while another says 'Come To Me My Love' – I'm getting conflicted vibes from the art.
Perhaps it's just the mixed nature of the venue: part cafe, sometime art gallery, the 'ink' in the name refers to the art they showcase, and 'lion' the shiny La Marzocco espresso machine that dominates the counter space. Ordering another coffee, I tune back into the conversation. “The different parts of the city – such as Thong Lor and Ekamai where we are now – are their own distinct ecosystems. They overlap, but they don't form part of any masterplan or urban design,” says Yeung. “Unlike other Asian cities like Beijing or Singapore, where you have a downtown heart that then radiates outwards into the suburbs, the centre of Bangkok depends on your point of view.”
The Craft Brewer
I later ponder these thoughts at Mikkeller, a homely Danish-run bar occupying an old family home where they have more than 30 craft beers on tap, and, a little dangerously, they let you sample as many as you like before making up your mind what you’d like to order. As I've arrived a little early in the day, and the main bar hasn't opened yet, I delve into their cave-like bottle shop and choose a Californian IPA with the refreshing name City of the Sun. Or rather, I let my drinking companion, craft beer importer, transplanted Californian, and full-time beer cheerleader Chad Mitchell, choose it for me. After an intense discussion of the aroma (fresh, fruity and hoppy, for the record), he tells me how the craft beer scene has exploded in Thailand over the last few years.
“The beer scene in Thailand is amazing right now, people are bringing in great brews from all over the world, and there's huge local interest in trying something different.” The evidence is in the eyes, as Mikkeller's beanbag-filled garden slowly fills up with a mix of Western suits, Japanese couples, and Thai hipsters, coming to enjoy the rapidly approaching evening. This embracing of new ideas by the cosmopolitan population is best exemplified by the raft of restauranteurs that have taken Thai food from the street stalls to the top table – places like Bo.lan run by husband-and-wife Bo Songvisava and Dylan Jones, David Thompson's irrepressible Nahm, and the understated but perhaps most intriguing, Soul Food Mahanakorn. This tiny wood-paneled space, the brainchild of American food writer Jarrett Wrisley, is an ode to the very best of Thai street food.
The Restauranteur
Having spent years critiquing restaurants, befriending chefs, learning the tricks of the trade, and immersing himself in all things culinary (around a decade ago we were rival food writers for magazines in Shanghai), he invested all of his accrued knowledge and savings into opening up a restaurant devoted to the love of his life. “I remember the heat, and the confusion, and trying to pick my way through the crowded sidewalks,” says Wrisley, recounting his first visit to Bangkok as a backpacker, “and how the character of the people – friendly and serene – completely contrasted with the noisy, chaotic, messy city that they lived in. And, of course, the bouquet of strange smells – delicious and putrid – one experiences when walking around for the first time here.”
I ask him if there was a particular dining experience that helped him to make the move from China to Bangkok and open up a restaurant of his own. “I don't think there was one moment, but rather a succession of delicious experiences that led me to Thailand and eventually opening up a restaurant. Fried chicken – the way that Thais can take an everyday dish but make it distinct and better than almost anywhere else – certainly left an impression on me. I love Thai-style fried chicken. But the incredible market culture was also a huge draw – the markets are incredible places to wander, and plan meals.”
The concept for Soul Food Mahanakorn was an extension of this, bringing together authentic regional Thai dishes made with organic, natural and free range ingredients – paired with cocktails served with a local twist. Leaving our meal order in the hands of the chef, we're served wonderfully crisp southern-style lamb samosas, amazing pork ribs braised in tamarind barbecue sauce, and a sumptuous spicy green peppercorn red curry, accompanied by a suitably strong Soul Punch – a double pour of Sangsom rum, amaretto, guava and passion fruit. When he joins us, I ask Wrisley for his assessment on the city's ever-evolving culinary scene. “There isn't really a single Bangkok food scene – instead there are many different sectors driven by different interests, doing vastly different things. Bangkok has a great community of chefs and restaurateurs that are not only raising the bar for food here, but helping each other along the way.”
The Photojournalist
Waking up early the next morning, I head to the other side of the city – to another “town” as Yeung would point out – to one of the oldest parts of Bangkok, Chinatown. To get here I've had to walk past the gorgeous Hua Lamphong train station, an ornate Italian-designed structure that since 1916 has been the terminus for passengers trains arriving from the far north, east and south of the country, as well as the famed Eastern and Oriental Express, which regularly runs overnight luxury train trips from Bangkok to Singapore via Kuala Lumpur. Currently a busy hub of domestic travellers, hawkers, and workers – I'm almost barreled over by an electric cart hauling train fuel – it’s planned the vibrant, cavernous space will be turned into a museum in the next few years, with the station being moved to the outskirts of the capital. While the trains are moving out, the subway, known as the MRT, has been steadily extended westwards.
“There's definitely development coming this way, but we're lucky that here we're still off the beaten track,” says photojournalist Nick McGrath, a former co-founder of multi-purpose space Cho Why, located just a few hundred metres from the train station. For the last several years, Nick has lived nearby in a formerly rundown 100 year-old shophouse that he converted himself. Pointing out a huge wraparound sofa in his home that he built out of pipes, he laughs and says, “This place was meant to be the ideal bachelor pad, but now I have to baby-proof it all for my four month-old son!” A few minutes later we're standing on the roof of the three storey Cho Why in the next lane over, a deliberately blank canvas that is used as a photo studio, art gallery, and event space, discussing what first drew McGrath to an area not known for foreigners.
“The best thing for me about Soi Nana, and Chinatown in general, is that – despite newcomers like us moving in – it's remained a working, living community.” As we later take a walk around the neighbourhood, Nick points out thriving local businesses – a bustling ice factory, and a hardware store packed to the rafters – interspersed with places run by newer arrivals like himself, a tapas bar called El Chiringuito, Nahim cafe, Patani photography studio, and a slightly too stylish bar known as Tep that brings in the hip crowd. The last place makes me question if the area is gentrifying too quickly.
“It's a good question,” says McGrath, “I guess all of us newcomers have been drawn here by the fact that it's not glamorous and upmarket, it's the exact opposite. There is a chance that the character of the area might slowly change, but progress is somewhat inevitable. For me now though, it's all about the raw urban environment, and the sense of authenticity of the place and its people - the sense that there are always so many weird random sights and sounds in this area that are unique to the rest of Bangkok.”
The 14 million people that call this unique city home probably all consider their own neighborhood to be unique. Yeung might be wrong – this isn't a collection of towns, it's an ecosystem of villages, each with its own idiosyncrasies, charms, and dreams.
Bangkok Culture
Book: Lawrence Osborne's engrossing semi-autobiographical 2010 novel Bangkok Days sums up the tragicomic lives of many Western expat males, who arrive intending to exploit Bangkok on their own terms but end up losing themselves to the sultry city.
Movie: Ignore the cringeworthy Nicholas Cage Hollywood remake, and instead seek out the 1999 original of hard-hitting action movie Bangkok Dangerous, directed by the Pang brothers. Deaf and mute Kong is a hitman who discovers a way to redemption.
Music: “One night in Bangkok and the world's your oyster, the bars are temples but the pearls ain't free. You'll find a God in every golden cloister, and if you're lucky then the God's a she.” It may be 30 some years since its release, but this song still rings true.