Bangkok is synonymous with urban living – we’ve got the heat, smog, traffic and not many wide open park areas to talk about. From a personal perspective, we are right in the centre of it – about 15mins by Skytrain from Siam Square. Hardly even suburban.
The advantage of the Skytrain is that it travels above street level and so you get a pretty good view over the city. However, even from this elevated aspect there are no green areas as far as the eye can see. Pretty depressing stuff. It’s not all bad though as our home is set in a mini oasis.
There’s a small garden out front and the moderately-sized swimming pool is surrounded by tropical plants mainly palms. I’m also sure David Attenborough would find plenty to keep him happy with here as far as the animal kingdom is concerned as well. The insects are naturally quite prolific and a bit scary and we often see squirrels running fearlessly along the electricity wires between the palms. In addition by night we see plenty of bats flitting by – both the large fruit bats and the smaller insectivorous – they often hang around under the overhang of our balcony. There is also often the soulful croaking of frogs – especially if we’ve just had a good downpour. I really wonder where they go in the dry season though – the ground is baked hard and there is not even a scent of water vapour in the air – but then if there is a shower, the call goes out and the toads all give throat in praise of the rain. You never see them in the pool though.
And that is actually the point of this particular blog – last night we were sitting on our balcony, on the second floor (3rd if you are American) eating dinner. Although it is the semi rainy season, it hadn’t rained in days and the grass outside our place was a uniform dusty brown. All we could hear was the distant hum of the evening traffic. It was dark, but I saw something move by my foot – It could have been a cockroach (although thankfully, in our apartment these are very rare) or a gecko, which are fairly abundant – but it was a frog – about 4cms long. How did he get up here? Certainly not hopped. There is only one way. He must have crawled up the sheer face of the wall. These frogs are nothing if not extremely hardy (and stupid, as there are no ponds up here). Of course by morning he was gone
