Suk Chai Alley: A very surprising and entertaining street
I completed the walk I started yesterday by heading back towards the hospital on Suk Chai Alley. (Also called Soi Suk Chai.) This street turned out to be quite surprising. I thought it would be pretty much the same as Soi Suk Saman, but it was quite different for a number of reasons.
While this street is also residential, it does have some entertaining and interesting twists. First off, there are amazingly diverse houses on this street. There is a blend of modern, suburban and even one traditional Thai house with a thatched roof. There is one house which seems ultra modern. Or at least it’s wall and gate at the street sure look modern and nicely designed. The second thing I noticed was how lush this street is. The trees are gorgeous, full and varied. Walking along Soi Suk Choi almost felt like walking in an arboretum. The foliage is amazing.
Another weird thing I noticed was the massage parlour right in the middle of the block. Who puts a massage parlour on a street where there are only houses and how is anyone supposed to find this place? Like yesterday’s street, there is not much traffic here, so I guess this massage place must be special as you’d have to know about it to find it. Given that this is Bangkok, where massage parlours come in many flavours and are to be found everywhere, maybe it’s on this street to maintain the privacy of its customers.
As I walked along, I came to the magical fence. I call it magical because I’ve never seen a fence that looks like this one. It’s built of vine-like plants that have been perfectly pruned. Every 3 meters or so there is a concrete structure that holds flowers and looks like something that one might find in the Roman baths. (I haven’t actually seen the Roman baths, but maybe there are parts that look like these small structures.) Anyway, when you take a look at the slides above, you’ll see that these concrete flower/fence/decorative structures are really quite lovely. But what’s very weird is that behind this amazing fence, there seems to be some sort of theme park going on in the backyard of the house that belongs to the fence. The reason I say this is because popping up behind the fence is a large yellow monkey. That’s all I could see, but this huge plastic monkey seemed to be attached to a lot of other plastic stuff. It seems like whoever owns the fence, and the house behind it, is a pretty creative and maybe crazy person.
After staring at the fence and the monkey for awhile, I continued my walk. The traditional Thai house with the thatched roof was visible behind a very nice gate and then as I approached the main Soi 42 arterial road, from where I had started the walk, there was the proverbial hawker stand. (Is there a food stand on every Bangkok street?) This stand was really busy, probably because it’s connected to a main road with lots of offices, condos and schools. Or maybe the food at this place is more outstanding than normal.
This concludes my little series on a walk on two very small Bangkok streets near where I work. For two little dead-end streets, there was quite a lot to see. After all, how many little residential streets have restaurants, massage parlours, magical fences and large yellow plastic monkeys on them.
Let’s face it. If you knew anything about massage you would know, if you build it, they will come. And maybe the yellow monkey is a secret sign for directions.
Yea, I guess that’s true about the massage place, but I’m not so sure about your theory that the monkey is some kind of directional beacon. Maybe it’s got cameras and is part of a security system. Or maybe it’s part of a ride. Or maybe it’s part of a collection of yellow plastic animals. Or maybe it’s looking to see where the closest food hawker stand is located.