Back to Bangkok

I head back to Southeast Asia next week. I had lived there for four years (my mother is Thai), completing all of high school there. Each year brought unique experiences that ultimately laid the brickwork for who I am today. It was my first time living in a developing country, and my most vivid memory is of the crazy flooding during the first 3 months living there. Sitting in a friend’s car, I remember we literally floated from block to block. The sight of people wading across the road in waist-high waters was incredible especially as we sat inside the car, protected and removed from the situation. It was an exciting way to get a first taste of how life would be, and how radically my life and outlook would change in just four years. I arrived in Thailand as a foreigner watching from the outside, and left feeling as part of the culture and that I had finally found home.

Next week, though, I return as essentially a stranger. It has now been over 11 years since I lived in Asia. I have no idea what to expect. Bangkok changes so quickly and without regret or looking back. The two times I’ve been back this decade have been unsettling. I wandered through old haunts but they have changed so much that I hardly recognise them. Khao Sarn Rd, a place mother hated me going to since no respectable (half) Thai girl should be seen hanging out with backpackers amid hostels, seamy bars, tattoo parlours and cheap retail stalls, is now a street bustling with Thai students, air-conditioned hotels and ritzy nightclubs. The Sky Train now makes it much easier to navigate through Bangkok instead of sitting in bumper-to-bumper traffic. Chatuchak, a massive maze of a weekend market where you sweated your way through miles upon miles of stalls offering wares ranging from clothes and accessories to food to dogs to miniature porcelain fruit and veg to furniture, now has air-conditioned lots for vendors. I ask myself though, is it the city that is different, or is it me who has changed?

This trip, I want to create photographs that describe how it feels to be lost in a home that doesn’t exist outside my memories.

Photo taken in Bangkok, January 2008.