Brent Cross Reincarnated

When I was a child I went shopping a lot. In fact, most Saturdays were spent in one mall or another either in Cambridge, Peterborough or London. So much so that I was surprised to discover, when I met my friend Kate, that there were families that didn't spend so much time in Marks and Sparks. Having just spent a few days staying at the heart of the Bangkok shopping district I can safely say that my experienced knowledge of the inner workings of Brent Cross (a mall in an unsalubrious and rather lost area of North London, next to a big dual carriageway/expressway) was no match for the polished professionalism of the Thais.

Not only do their shops open 10-10 every day, no sorry hours on Sundays for quasi-religious/workers' rights reasons, not only are there ten or fifteen malls side by side (one selling just IT and camera kit...guess what, I have bought the only camera not yet available in Thailand so no spare charger there then!) but all of them are connected by the infamous 2-line Skytrain and its walkways so you never need to descend to the level of the traffic. Imagine, if you can, fat concrete pillars all the way up Oxford Street or Fifth Avenue, supporting a monorail worthy of Metropolis from which walkways deliver you direct to the doors of Selfridges, NikeTown or John Lewis. No more dodging red buses, black cabs or righteous cyclists. No more imagining how much better Oxford Street would be with a fast lane, for those who know what they're doing, and a slow one, for the dawdlers. Simply get your train from one high-rise glittering glass tower of consumption to the next and buy buy buy. The traffic is still there of course and so is the 'other' shopping, the sort that it is difficult to see from so high up, the bustle of the street markets, the selling and buying of the cheap food, clothes and supplies that support the livelihoods of those who earn less than a Skytrain day pass.

It reminds me of something I read a long time ago in Hunting Mr Heartbreak by Jonathan Raban. He writes about several different places in the US including New York and he describes how that city could be seen in terms of the extremes of air people and street people (forgive me if I misquote; I have several - too many!- books with me but this isn't one of them). In the air live the penthouse and apartment dwellers, the wealthier residents who never touch the street if they can help it, moving from air-conditioned cab to elevator to lobby, from home, to mall, to work. On the street are those who live, eat and sleep on it, in cardboard, on the rubbish that the air people leave behind, on the pavements that their polar opposites would rather not touch. Bangkok, it seems to me, makes Raban's metaphor concrete.

However, this being Thailand it is not quite so simple. As I passed yet another shiny ziggurat in the sky I noticed something equally shiny at its base: a shrine. This particular one, known as the Erawan shrine, is mentioned in most guidebooks because it is rather beautiful but there are several more, often just to the left or right of the main entrance (that is the entrance on the ground). When a building is constructed, the builders must allow space for a spirit house or shrine, to appease the spirits who have been forced to move to make way for the new edifice. Apparently the opening of the Grand Hyatt Erawan Hotel was delayed until the shrine was built and a more auspicious day dawned. I was happy, chastened even, to see that there were as many hordes of worshippers, not tourists, around the base praying as there were hurrying along in the sky.