"This is the best sidewalk in all of Bangkok," I thought to myself as I walked past the Gaysorn Plaza at Ratchaprasong. "Smooth and level. No missing bricks," I admired to myself. "Street vendors are here, as always, but the sidewalk is amazingly big enough to let pedestrians walk by. I don't understand why every sidewalk in Bangkok isn't like this. Sidewalks really aren't that hard to build!"
Then, all of a sudden, the vendors paniced and hurriedly started wrapping up their trinkets and paintings and postcards inside the blankets that they were laid upon. I have seen this scene before. The vendor at the end of the road sees a policeman coming and everyone wraps up and runs away until the coast is clear.
Then I felt the rain drops.
"Oh, no big deal. It's just a gentle rain."
A few seconds later: "Hmm. It does seem to be getting harder."
And finally, "Whoa! Run for cover!" was all I could think of as I joined all of the shoppers and vendors scurrying and scattering like roaches shocked by the sudden flick of the light switch.
I climbed the stairs to the covered overpass between Gaysorn and Central World Plaza and watched the rain fall on one of Bangkok's busiest streets. In the distance, I could see the huge LCD screen at Central playing commercials and music videos and bragging that it was the "Biggest LCD in Southeast Asia!"
On the other side of the street was the recently finished Big C with another movie theatre complex and a much smaller, but still very big and very bright LCD screen. By now everything had become wet and shiny and the two screens were reflected on the road and on every other surface. With all of the flashing colorful reflections, I could easily imagine this very block becoming Thailand's Times Square. Indeed, New Year's Eve celebrations are held here already. It's just a matter of time before the entire street is full of bright neon and LCD screens.
Several tourists joined me on the overpass. They were all busy setting up their cameras to try to record the night scene. For them, it was a once-in-a-lifetime shot: the traffic, the sheets of rain, the shiny reflective surfaces, the LCD screens. To the vendors huddled under the overpass stairs, it was a once-a-night occurance, as normal as the crowds of white sweaty faces that browse their wares every day.
The rain was steady, but then began to pick up. And then the gentle breeze became a strong wind. I was facing north, with the wind at my back. "At least I am dry underneath the cover of the overpass," I thought to myself. It was then that the cold wetness of the back of my jeans made me realize that the wind and rain had soaked my backside.
But then, in less than 15 minutes, the rain stopped, leaving behind several inches of water in the outside two lanes of the eight lane road. Just as quickly as the rain came and went, the sidewalks quickly filled with pedestrians, the flower ladies set up shop to sell offerings to the Hindu shrines on the corners, and the air became full of burning incense as the 15-minute backlog of worshippers came forward to the shrine to make their requests or to give their thanks.
As I made my way down the stairs in my dry-front wet-back jeans and towards the five-faced Hindu image, my mind was full of the latter: Thanks -- thankful to see an everyday-exotic scene like this one.