I’d Let You Watch. I Would Invite You.
Welcome to “One Night in Bangkok” the series. Follow me through Hong Kong and Bangkok while I act as my Rotary Club‘s delegate to the International Convention in Thailand, with posts that are titled from the lyrics of the song “One Night in Bangkok.” If this is your first visit to the series, please click here to begin at the beginning.
There’s a hum to this much concentrated neon. A buzz. A murmur. It builds from the asphalt floors and ricochets along the walls of the canyons of concrete, rumbles in the center of the ribcage, confuses the ear drums. Upon which sound to focus? Which snatch of conversation, skittering along the pavement? Will I understand anyone? Anywhere?
Maybe I’ll just meander along with the tide. Add my sound to the collective hum.
The Chicks shop did not sell chicken. It dealt in women’s clothing.
I just could not resist……………If my Dad owned a pawn shop (or any shop), it would be called “Chewing Fat.”
Pulsing street corner.
A certified Hong Kong surcee to the reader who guesses what the MTM store is. DO NOT GOOGLE IT.
Chinese branch of the Mar’s Candy Company?
Love the photos, Andra, and your fabulous descriptive wordplay to start the show.
Thank you, Ted.
I wonder if they have Mars bars here……….
Andra, that’s like a sign saying ‘Do not touch, wet paint’ so what do we do? Yes we touch it to find out if the sign was fibbing!
So in the spirit of fair play I have resisted the urge.
So my guess is a money cleaning store!
Helen, I wish it were a money-giving store……but it definitely takes one’s money.
Great pictures! I love the “Chewing Fat” pawn shop! Kinda a cross between the local diner where all the geezers hang and pawn shop.
MTM it’s gotta be an architectural supply store! Or a metrosexual clothing store.
OK, I had to look! and I was off by an order of magnitude…and I won’t tell!
Hahaha.
Thank God we haven’t found any archtecty supplies. Some of them are sharp.
They’ve got the same traffic bollards as we have here in Blighty – hooray! and agreed a great name for a shop.
I have been riding a lot of trains, Jim, but I could never top your train travel tales.
If you can give me some ideas that would be great Andra! got a Buddhist theme swirling around at the moment. Sounds like a great trip…..
Broken air conditioning? Someone wearing a face mask who keeps breathing on you somehow?
First, the MTM store is a paper supply and greeting card store. Love the “Chewing Fat” comment, you have to get a little neon sign made and give to your Dad to put out.
Dad would not get it.
It would be funny if you were right, Lou, because it would give MTM something to which to apply his pens……
Well, I would say it is a deli/food/sandwich sort of place…
Great pictures.
They may HAVE food, but it isn’t their primary offering.
No idea. No idea at all. I’ll take a guess – an automated teller that should be ATM.
I wish that were the case, Penny. Then maybe MTM could’ve gone in there and hit the jackpot because his initials matched.
It is an “adult” toy shop! Would be perfect….
All of you pictures remind me of the movie Blade Runner. One of my favorite movies of all time and one of the main reasons I have always wanted to visit places like Tokyo and Hong Kong. How much longer are you in HK?
Have you hit any cool electronics shops yet? Hmm. Maybe that is what MTM is. Machines, Technology and Man.
Ha. Ha. NO.
Hong Kong is very Blade Runner-ish, especially in the little alley ways and the height of it. We leave May 3 for Bangkok. Temps in the 100′s there.
We actually had to find an electronics shop because MTM’s computer charger stopped working on the way over.
OK, if you’re in a neighborhood with pawn shops, there are probably places close by that will happily accept $$$ from the tipsy sailor who’s been at sea for six months, so . . . I’ll guess this “mtm” is, at the very least, fronting a gentleman’s club (to put it politely).
I think I can hear that hum! How exciting to be in such a vibrant place!
They might perform such services in a place like that………..we didn’t go in to find out.
Book store? I agree with Carnell – definitely Blade Runner landscape…
My crew has arrived on the Emerald Isle, on a train to Scotland.
I hope Cayleigh did okay on the flight, though she was probably too excited to sit still for that long. I can’t wait to hear about her trip.
Not a book store.
My first guess was clothing – I think that’d be a great name for a clothing line, but after reading some of the comments and your responses to those comments I’m going on the assumption that I’m incorrect, I mean how many clothing stores sell food along with the clothing?
I’m loving Hong Kong. Thanks for the pictures and your descriptions are so very lovely!
They didn’t have any clothing in the windows.
One of those swank Chinese bath parlors/house? Or where we don’t want are men to go….
Hmmmmmmm……….they might have that in there somewhere……………but I doubt it for such an upscale place.
I can’t wait to find out ‘but the queens we use would not excite you!’. Your pictures are wonderful! I remember when we were in San Francisco we found Powell Street (pretty easy, that) and Jessie Street (thought it may have been “Jesse”)
Part of what we did today reminded me of San Francisco, Jessie.
I’m cheating because I can read the Japanese underneath, so I will remain silent and wait to here whether or not you tried any of the product and if it felt/smelled good. I love your descriptions of the city, with the vibrant sounds creating a powerful picture.
We didn’t go in, Lisa. I was afraid I would buy everything in the place.
Probably a wise choice. I bet it would have been good stuff.
If neon means shopping, then I’m in. I’m such a consumer, it’s sad.
Hugs,
Kathy
What is it about neon that makes us want to buy, buy, buy, Kathy? I’m the same way.
It’s the bright lights and flashing…stimulates the brain, gets us all worked up.
MTM = Mary Tyler Moore blow up dolls . . . made in the US!
What’s bad about this answer is that I once produced a play that featured a blow up doll as a character……….
Was it “Lars and the Real Girl”?
The thing is . . . most blow up dolls are made in China. MTM dolls are imported from the US.
No. It was a silly political play.
I did not realize MTM was an American maker of blow up dolls. How funny.
MTM = Mandarin Talking Machines (a/k/a Robots).
I wish one of these things existed, where I could speak English into it, and it would shoot the proper Chinese out the other end.
MTM = M&M’s with Toffee in the middle
Nancy, please tell me they make such a thing………..I would never stop eating them………
We may be on to something here!
Kitchenwares?
No one’s guessed that yet…
Very good guess, Cameron. I suppose some people might use it in the kitchen.
There’s a Japanese convenience store called mtm that’s Morning to Midnight but I’m guessing that’s not it… Looks too swanky.
It is swanky. It is a skincare store and spa.
They have a very swanky website too.
Great photos Andra!
Thanks, Tom.