Day 7: Not in the Guidebooks...
One of the wonderful aspects of staying at a hostel is that you get access to options that no hotel concierge — never mind globally-published guidebook — would offer. The two most popular are the Ghost Tower and the Abandoned Mall. The Ghost Tower is the site of a fresh “suicide” and so I’ll likely not get to go. The abandoned mall is still accessible, quite near the Khao San road.
So we get in a cab and head out. The passage into the mall is through a literal hole in the wall. It’s guarded by a woman to tell us “Police no go”. Whether this meant we’re on our own in there and the police won’t help us, or whether the police forbid entry, we can’t tell. She makes no effort to stop us though and entry is simple. The hole is boarded up, and the board held in place with strings. We take the strings off the nails, remove the board, climb through and we’re in.
The crush and noise of the crowds in the streets surrounding Khao San Road is replaced by silence. Echoing silence. Water collects on the first floor, coming up to my calf. It smells surprisingly better than I’d expected. Not rank or fetid at all. Even the dry squatter zone with its makeshift kerosene stoves in the entryway was if not entirely urine-free, not revolting.
The brave among us risk the water for better pictures. I was reckless and went in barefoot, to preserve my decaying sandals. This decision made me very mindful of every step; there was a lot of detritus on the ground which definitely included glass. Walking around the first floor lake with only large koi fish for company, then up the stairs to the second floor was an amazing experience. Like those post-apocalyptic movies. All malls will look like this after civilization collapses. And so quickly too: the mall was abandoned in 1999. And the decay is beautiful, all the fleshy veneer of the building — the paint, the flooring, the ceiling tiles, the delicate machinery of the escalators — all falling away quickly. The bones of concrete remain. The bones of the building growing new, organic, flesh of plants and algae and fish.
The emptiness of the place breeds such thoughts.
Gollum
During our photographic explorations, the mall’s resident squatter showed up. Perhaps he wasn’t clinically malnourished, but his bloated belly and the vine veins bulging over all his visible skin didn’t signal good health to me. Perhaps alcohol. Perhaps insanity. His eyes were bright and intense as he streamed a flow of Thai at us. First genial and friendly, then progressively angrier. He wanted us out. Or he wanted us to give him more money before we left. Not threatening exactly, but his motives were inscrutable.
