Day 7: Out to the Suburbs

Sorry about the lack of pictures; the Internet connection is somewhat spotty at the hotel and there's not enough time to upload. I'll add pictures when I get a chance to.

In the morning, we hopped into vans and drove to Minburi, a suburb to the east of Bangkok. It was originally a wetland with agriculture as its main industry because of fertile soil. Factories popped up along the river and provided industrial jobs, but these factories also polluted the water. Minburi actually means "Town of Fish."

We visited Patama Roonratwik, an award-winning architect who founded Community Architects for Shelter and Environment (CASE). By "community architect," she means an architect who designs directly with the community. I feel like she and her work embody so much that we've been learning in this class. It was an honor to be her guests.

Our meeting place was TEN house, a compound designed by a group of architects who wanted to communally live together. Its purpose was to provide housing for what Patama called the "informal urban poor" - that is, the squeezed middle class that can't afford to buy new residential developments and aren't poor enough to receive aid from the government. The house is very nice, although the two years put into jointly designing it seemed obsessive.

The workshop members took a boat trip around the rivers and canals of Minburi. I can honestly say that this boat ride has been the best one I've ever been on. We rode motorized gondolas, so were barely inches from the murky water (Non told us to plug our ears just in case). But the sights were amazing - not in the way that they just awed you with beauty, but in the way that they were just real. The ride was an intimate look into the private lives of these community members, many of whom live in slum conditions.

We saw: houses on stilts along the canal (apparently illegal - there is a threat of eviction although these houses have been here for 10 years plus), houses made from corrugated sheets of metal and other inexpensive materials, high-rise residential units, new single family homes/townhouses that provided a backdrop against the low-rise shacks, green plants and green plant pickers in the water, concrete walkway along the canals, motorbikes along those walkways, fishing nets, cows, chickens, fishermen, women, children who smiled and waved to us, and a lot of personality and character.

For lunch we went to the "new market" food court. There are a few markets in Minburi, many of which we visited: the old market, the old new market, the new market, and the C-mart/Tesco. The old wet market is like a traditional market with food stalls outdoors and vendors laying out their produce on the ground and their flapping seafood in buckets. I saw things like turtles and fruits that are only native to Southeast Asia. The new market where we ate was in a large, un-air-conditioned building filled with vendors. The food was great, once again - I had chicken satay (7 baht a stick) and pad thai. There was also a KFC nearby, and yes, somebody did eat there.

I thought our post-lunch discussion about what we saw on the boat ride and in the neighborhood was very interesting. Many people felt strongly that the juxtaposition of slums and new residential units was "interesting" or maybe even wrong. Many people also felt that "the government should do something," which of course is a lot to ask for since the government here lacks money and political will. That's why I'm all for Patama's approach of working with the community to design low-cost, appropriate housing solutions for these absolute urban poor. As professionals, I really do think we need to be careful about applying our own judgment to other people's living conditions; that is, we can't necessarily assume that the people are miserable. But at the same time, we should also try to see what's objectively wrong and try to be of use.

After Minburi, we visited Chulalongkorn University to pay our visit to the Dean of the Economics Department. She wasn't there, but at least we got to use the computer lab. And also interesting are the uniforms that college students have to wear.