Incense clouds and candles

Just a “few” dried chillies !

I went for a walk around Chinatown again the other day, it’s one of my favourite parts of this city. In some parts of Bangkok you can almost forget that you are in Asia, but not in Chinatown ! Every street, every little alleyway, has something to remind you of that, such as the little shopfront store selling nothing but sacks of dried red chilli. I could smell the place long before I saw this trolley-load of chilli parked out the front. My throat began to burn from the pungent smell just walking past the shop, from a very quick glance inside I guess there was about 200 large sacks of dried red chilli.
I was almost beginning to wonder if there actually had been a military coup a week ago, as I had not seen any soldiers around my suburb or downtown, but that day I did see a few patrolling near Wat Traimit. You know that you are not in Kansas, or anywhere else in the “real” world back home, when you see armed soldiers patrolling on a city street !
The curfew is still in effect, but now only between midnight and 4am, so it does not affect me …I’m in bed long before midnight and certainly not up and about before four ! Predictably most western governments are bleating about democracy and elections,and ignoring the fact that Thailand has never had true democracy as most westerners would understand it. Foreign governments were quite happy to do business with the corrupt quasi-democracy of the previous Thaksin/Yingluk Shinawatra dynasty, perhaps they should keep quiet for a while and just offer help in eventually organising truly free and fair elections when the time is right.
Anyway, never mind the politics, here are a few more photos :