Scenes from Victory Monument

I was taking photographs at Bangkok’s Victory Monument this morning. The large roundabout forms a transport hub in the centre of the city and, as you can see, is crowded with buses, taxis, cars, bicycles and tuk-tuks at ground level with a pedestrian walkway circling the roundabout and a higher level carrying the BTS Skytrain.

(click to open larger size)

Bangkok is always busy and nowhere illustrates this better than the Victory Monument roundabout. The layers of transport, one above the other, give a sense of the bustling heart of Bangkok. On the ground level, beside the road, street vendors cook up a huge variety of dishes including spicy salads with shredded papaya, fried chicken, pork and shrimp dishes and more variations on noodle dishes than it’s possible to count.

The pedestrian walkway is busy with friends on shopping expeditions, businessmen talking urgently on mobile phones and groups of gossiping schoolchildren whilst the Skytrain rumbles back and forth overhead.

Sadly, in another part of the city, the situation at the international airport is about to play out to what we hope will be a peaceful conclusion. If you’re one of the estimated 100,000 350,000 tourists currently stranded in Bangkok then I hope you’ve been able to get out and enjoy some of the city’s more appealing aspects. Whilst there are probably worse places to be stranded, I hope that you’ll soon be back on schedule and that being stuck in Bangkok isn’t proving to be too much of a nightmare.