SketchCrawl #25 in Bangkok

Last Saturday saw sketchers all over the places, we had just a few in Bangkok this time, but with just as much meaning and fun. I determined to go alone this time eyeing an area of old Siam on western end of an historical road below the grand palace. Some how, I was contacted by a 4th year arch. student from Rungsit U to come along, so we went and had a fun sketching day.

We started off from the historical theater of Bangkok, Chalermkrung Royal theater, the first air-conditioned cinema built to celebrate Bangkok’s 150 anniversary in 1930s. It used to be an icon of entertainment world, survived the new generation of MULTIPLEX today as the only theater to perform Thai traditional mask dance “Khone”.

The New Road cut through several other roads. It is interesting that all such intersection of the era were created full of characteristic. Unlike modern days junctions that were so indifferent and messy. Sao Chingcha junction is one of the great street scape with a grand circular space. Others included Phrayasri junction which was built in era of King Rama 5 (1870s)

In this sketchcrawl, the magic of sketching touched on us when a young lady stop by with her mother. This 6 years old lady in white dress stayed with us for a long while showing her own sketches of her dad with broad neck tie and black shoes. Her steady hand that produced confident line strokes confirmed her mother’s proud claim that she is the best in her primary 1 class. She even used my pentel brush pen to write a few lines of chinese poems! I presented my only brush pen as her present (will get a new one tomorrow!)

Sketching in Bangkok could be both fun and, dangerous, especially along this old section of town as the walk way is narrow. However, here is somewhere you could be free of road side vendors that infested all the newer parts of town. But we did not go hungry, after the whole day of street life, we ended up early evening at a unique, alternative bookshop called PASSPORT, a charming small book cafe that has only two tables surrounded by but not just thousand of books but as well as a few hundreds more of every other things including those that you could not think of! And here’s how it looks like, to me.

doesn’t look that bad, does it?

We ended our 25th SketchCrawl with the famous pad thai not far away, and you know how it was like when one is with friends for meals, you forgot everything else.. so, there’s no sketch of the famous pad thai, not even the photos of the empty plates, sorry!