Ooh that smell!!

I grew up near the Atlantic Ocean, and even today the smell of salt air and rotting fish brings visions of my childhood. 

The children of Bangkok may feel faint when, as adults, they smell an aroma that reminds them of growing up in the City of Heavenly Beings.

One thing you notice when you first arrive in Bangkok, and you notice every day that you live here, is that the city smells.   The aromas of Bangkok are many and varied, and are equally likely to make you salivate or retch.  Here are some of the olfactory sensations that assault you as you walk the streets in this Oriental setting.

First and foremost, Bangkok smells of pollution.  You can see it sticking to every surface in the city, and the air is so thick that breathing is like smoking.  Most people who work outside in the city (police officers, security guards, parking attendants) wear masks over their faces to filter the air; and it’s not uncommon to see Thais walking home from the grocery store with the same kind of mask.

On the positive side, the smell of grilling meat on nearly every road and soi in Bangkok is mouth-watering.  Pork, chicken, beef, sausages… the barbeque starts around sunrise and lasts until after midnight.  Some of these barbeque operations are moveable feasts, attached to a bicycle or motorcycle, spreading the smell of burning animal fat everywhere as the rider/driver moves his wares from place to place.

But there are also many other types of food for sale on the streets of the city, each making a contribution to the patchwork of aromas.  The tangy smell of somtam will entice those who have a taste for it.  Deep fryers throw out the smell of oil mixed with fish, chicken, bananas or other fried delights.  Soup being cooked in clay pots over hot coals adds its own steamy smell.  Of course the Durien vendors add their own unique odor to the fray, either attracting or repelling with the rich ripe smell that carries a long way on even the slightest breeze.

Then there are the smells associated with bars; stale beer, whiskey and cigarette smoke that drift out the open door and into the street.  Some bars install ‘mist machines’ that spray a fine mist of water in the street in front of the bar.  The added humidity seems to do little to relieve the heat, and it makes the area smell vaguely like a sauna.  Not something I’ve ever found very appealing.

Walking past open doors of office buildings, shopping malls, and restaurants will often provide a blast of arctic-like conditioned air that brings to mind the special smell of a walk in refrigerator for that brief moment until you pass the door and step back into the blast furnace that is a Bangkok afternoon.  Somehow, it seems to me like I can smell heat as well.  It may sound crazy, but I reckon heat smells different than cold.

Of course, many smells in the city aren’t pleasant.  Dogs roam freely in the Bangkok streets, doing what dogs do — pissing and shitting as they please.  As unpleasant as it might be to step in stray dog droppings, you haven’t lived till you’ve gone ankle deep in a pile of elephant shit.  Against all common sense, elephants are parading around the streets of Sukhumvit every night of the year, defecating at their pleasure.  The owners typically clean it up, but — for example — the entrance to Nana Plaza is narrow and crowded.  I’ve seen drunks obliviously step in elephant poop there before the owner had a chance to get his shovel and plastic bag out.  Man, the cursing!

But it doesn’t require animal droppings to offend in Bangkok.  Walk a few blocks on any street in the city and you’ll almost cetainly be assaulted by a pocket of foul air that screams at you that you’ve just stepped into an open sewer.  Often, the source of the offending smell can’t be pinpointed; it apparently seeps up from underground and just hangs around waiting to gag the unsuspecting.

For those who have never seen them, the Khlongs (canals) of Bangkok can probably sound romantic… Beautiful Bangkok, the Venice of the East.  In fact the canals are stagnant, filthy and disgusting.  My personal vote for the nastiest smell in Bangkok (and there are thousands of contenders) goes to the small bridge on Tanruen Road that passes over Khlong Toei to take you to the Customs Department and the Port Authority of Thailand.

This little piece of hell-on-earth is horrible.  I have had to walk across this bridge many times.  It’s a bit too far to hold my breath all the way across, and I often find myself breathing in quick shallow breaths in an effort to prevent myself from spewing my breakfast all over the road.  The truly amazing thing is that houses are built side by side along the entire length of this fetid, stagnant cesspool.  I can’t imagine how people can live there.

In addition to the facemasks discussed above, Thais have another method for dealing with the constant assault on their olfactory senses… a magic potion called yaa homm.  In Thai, yaa means ‘medicine’ and homm means ‘good smell’.  Yaa homm is a small tube, about the size of a lipstick applicator that Thais carry in their pockets.   It is filled with a menthol type liquid.  When faced with a odor-attack, Thais pull out the yaa homm tube, whip off the top, and stick it up their noses.  It’s not unusual to see a veritable parade of Thai men & women, walking down the street holding these tiny tubes of yaa homm to fight a losing battle against the stink of Bangkok.

Incidentally, yaa homm is used for seemingly hundreds of applications.  I’ve seen Thais dab it on their temples to fight headaches, or on mosquito bites to prevent itching.  I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that they believe it is a magic potion that acts as both aphrodesiac and contraceptive.

Of course, breathing Bangkok air isn’t the only hazard to confront people as they walk the streets of Bangkok.  While sucking in the diesel fumes of passing busses pedestrians have to contend with uneven footpaths, narrow passages, low hanging signs and electrical wires, motorcycles on the sidewalk, and crazy drivers (including many going the wrong way down the street… a real danger if you only look one way stepping off the curb).

If you survive all these hazards, you may enjoy the pleasant aromas of oil and incense wafting out of the massage shops, and the appealing scent of flowers and incense at the many Bhuddist shrines, temples and spirit houses that dot the city.

A walk through Bangkok is an experience in ecclectic aromas, as you pass from the perfume of flowers, to the stench of sewage, to the savoury smell of grilling meat, to the ripe smell of durien; all set against the unchanging background of a city drowning in it’s own pollution.  It’s one of the many things that reminds you that your not in Kansas any more.