I’ve written here before about the madness of Bangkok’s streets and escaping them by heading up the stairs to the public transport joy that is the Skytrain: what I didn’t mention in that article was the Skytrain’s underground cousin, the MRT metro system. Completed only a couple of years ago, the MRT is a gleaming stainless steel grey, state of the art subway system that intersects with the Skytrain to form a complete circle through the major Bangkok central environs.
If walking up the stairs to the Skytrain’s ultra modern suspended platforms provides relief from the streets and a sense of modernity, going down into the Metro feels like you’ve entered the set for a remake of 1984. It’s quiet and air-conditioned and immensely spacious, three things you crave on the streets; but down underground it’s so quiet and air-conditioned and spacious that it feels eerie, sinister even. There are no shops, no adverts, no buskers, no nothing, just a huge expanse of grey. Guards patrol the entrance ways, staff hover by the glowing screens of the ticket machines, conversations seem to drop into a whisper when people enter: everyone is dwarfed by the grey floors, ceilings, walls and ticket barriers. It’s an architect’s wet dream, a purity of form unsullied by advertising or shops.
The Metro is the embodiment of what Bangkok wants to become – a hyper-modern, wholly sanitised place, Singapore on steroids. But soon the first shops will be opening underground and the buzz of commerce and the inevitable explosion of garish ads will bring the first bits of chewing gum on the floor, cigarette butts on the stairs and enterprising noodle sellers from the street above running the gauntlet with the station guards. The Metro will become refashioned in Bangkok’s image, less pristine but certainly more human.
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