A man with a heavy yoke bearing wok-like metal caldrons of coals with roasted eggs and peanuts on their grates walks past an upscale, five-star continental restaurant. A man in worn clothes and a coolie hat pushes a large cart filled with elegant, handmade brooms made of fine rushes in front of a modern department store. Their customers, people with incomes similar to theirs, pay very little for their wares - foreigners pay much more. We don't complain. The new/old, rich/poor parade is common to Thailand. We hear varying opinions about it all the time. Change is inevitable, change is sad and change is exhilarating. Judgements are a waste of time.
One becomes accustomed to the disparities, but the juxtaposition of new next to old is occasionally startling. I was startled today. We were in a five-storied shopping complex called, "Big C". The shop we were looking for was on the top floor, so we took a series of escalators up from the basement parking area. As we approached the last escalator, we saw an enormous grid of bamboo sticks supporting the scaffolding for a work platform near the ceiling of this huge building. Evidently, there is some cleaning, or the hanging of a new decorative installation going on up there.
At first glance, it appeared as if this flimsy looking array of bamboo sticks of varying diameters could be blown down by any huffing-puffing passing wolf, but upon close inspection, I realized it was a masterful piece of engineering. The construction was elegant, sensible, sturdy and a perfect example of economic simplicity. There were no metal parts - not a screw - not a nail - not a stanchion. The requisite triangulation was kept to a minimum - no redundancies (as found in heavily regulated western scaffolding). I had the feeling that I was looking at a child's tree-house until I zeroed in on the joined parts.
Every length of bamboo was lashed to it's supporting leg with heavy twine twisted taut with a short stick, and it, in turn, was tied down to keep it from flying off like a toy propeller wound on a rubber band.
I was mesmerized by it all. I'm not sure what feelings coursed through me as I marveled at the construction of this scaffolding. Here I was, standing in the bowels of an extravagant, modern shopping mall and staring at the sort of construction one might have seen at the building site of The Great Pyramid Of Giza. Mostly, I was overwhelmed with joy just knowing that there are people still alive who know how to build something like this - people who build simply and expertly without using sophisticated materials, diagrams, or OSHA regulations.
I've seen numerous pickup trucks on the highways with long lengths of bamboo strapped to them. I have a new respect for the folks in the front seats and crammed into the truck beds - the guys in torn tee shirts, puffing on hand-rolled butts and grinning toothlessly at me as they pass. They are not poor and they know it - they are the masters of a fading art. They make me sad and they make me proud. They poke a bamboo stick into a ball of undefinable emotions.
