Bangkok Is Dark Tonight.

As the situation around the globe escalates and situations in Thailand change minute to minute, a number of crazy things have happened. Public movement around the country has ground to a halt. Borders between provinces has been closed. Masks are now required on all public transport and grocery stores in the city of Bangkok. Public areas both municipal (pubic parks) and within apartment buildings (building walking paths, basketball courts, swimming pools, lobby areas) are ordered to be closed. And, what has affected me most of all, there is now a curfew all over Thailand.

Bangkok’s curfew beings at 22:00 and ends at 04:00. This includes all street vendors and convenience stores. It is unheard of to see a 7-11 or a Family Mart closed. You may see it packed with palates of goods ready to be stocked on shelves to a point where you can’t move through the store, but, technically, you’re allowed to try to go in and purchase goods, but it’s never closed. Though not a final sign of the apocalypse, the convenience stores being closed is definitely a canary freaking out in the mine.

Last night, I looked out my window at around 23:00, like I do on many nights. It was dark. Real dark.

I can usually see my fruit vendor and the place I get pad kra pao from. The vendor was gone and the restaurant was dark. There was one vendor with a light on. It was the only one on the alley. Everything else was dark.

Sukhumvit Road is probably one of the busiest roads in Bangkok. During rush hour on a normal weekday, it’s crushed with traffic. Late at night, it’s crushed with traffic. During COVID, there is a significant drop in the number of cars, but it’s still rockin’ on the regular. Last night, I stood at the window for a good ten minutes and all I saw were a police paddy wagon, a single car, and three motorbikes. In the distance, I can see a long stretch of elevated highway, and I counted one car on the highway. It was freaky as hell.

The other day while I took a 12km walk, in the area of Asok skytrain station and Nana skytrain station, a place that is usually buzzing with expat activity, street vendors, and restaurants, there was a lot less ambient lighting around. Last night, the view from my window made that area look like the Las Vegas strip.

There are places like Phuket that are currently on a 20:00-04:00 curfew. They have even shut down the airport completely. This means that anyone looking to leave the country has to make their way up to Bangkok to get one of the few flights out per week. I realize that with the current way I have been spending my days, a 2 hour difference in curfew wouldn’t really impact me that much, but the idea of a 20:00 curfew crushes my soul.

The restaurant that I was supposed to be staging at has changed their hours once again. Originally, they were a 12:00-midnight. When they went down to delivery/take away only, they changed their hours to 16:00-22:30. Now, with the curfew, they have changed to 12:00-20:00, with the last order in at 19:30.

Before the curfew, the food delivery service was booming. I’m wondering how big of a damper this will put on them as an industry. I wonder how everything will change when this is all over.

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Yesterday, I went to Big C (like a Super K-Mart). As I have been cleaning my apartment, I’ve noticed that the dust mop that I have really does nothing about the fact that I shed a lot of hair. Nothing shows that more than the white tile flooring in my kitchen. I had to go to Big C to pick up a broom and a dustpan. I never thought I’d miss my Swifter wet wipes until now. This has been the second time in the past 10 days that I have ended up in a grocery store. Both times that I have been in, they have been incredibly well stocked. There’s no real crush on any product. If they normally stocked it, it was there. That seems to be a theme in Bangkok.

So many places talk about a shortage of masks, N95 and otherwise. Although I haven’t seen many N95 masks here in Bangkok, I have seen a million other masks, surgical, cloth, and others being sold on just about every street corner. I myself have three washable masks that I use whenever I’m out and about. Hand sanitizer is all over the place as well. Not only is it available at all grocery stores and public transit places free to use, but the alcohol gel is for sale on the streets near most of the mask vendors, though there are way more mask vendors than gel vendors.

In addition, the labs at Chulalongkorn University has come up with a COVID test that takes only 15 minutes and started being available to the public here for those with moderate to severe symptoms. This fills me with a lot of hope that Thailand and Bangkok will flatten their curve in a manner that is faster than what is happening in the United States.

With all of that being said, I am trying to stay in my apartment as much as humanly possible. I am still really only going out for food or for a long distanced walk.

On a happier note, though I have been getting tired of just the food on the streets directly adjacent to my building, I did have a fantastic meal yesterday. I had chow foon from one vendor, some red roasted spare ribs from another, and finally some vegetarian spring rolls. I know it sounds like real fat kid snax, but it hit the spot.

An interesting thing about street food here in Bangkok is how small the portions are. They are probably half to a third of the size of American potions. What makes this really interesting is that sometimes I’ll get one thing and I won’t think it’s enough food so I’ll buy a couple of other things. When I get home and eat that first thing, I stop being so hungry. This means that I look at the other food that I bought and sometimes won’t eat it until the next day. The food from the first dish is just enough the sate my appetite. It’s a really interesting concept. Eating just enough to not be hungry.

I’m sure that the social aspect of dining causes people to eat more, but when one is by themselves, whereas in America, I would be gluttonous and just finish a bigger potion, here in Thailand, I find that enough food is enough. I know this isn’t something a restaurant worker really wants to hear, as we make out livelihood on others’ gluttony, but as a consumer it makes me think a lot about how much and what I’m buying and ordering.

I think that’s enough for today. I’m going to get back to my obsessive playing of Animal Crossing and my half watching of TV and YouTube.