Today was a routine day going to work. I usually walk from my home to the bus stop at the Ratchada/Sutthisarn interjunction which was about a 2km walk from my home. Today, since I left a little later than usual, I found that I was rather thirsty from the routine walk so I went to Seven-Eleven to get a quick drink. I bought myself a can of coke, and decided to walk to the bus stop asap so that I won't miss the bus when it came. To my dismay, I've noticed that the trash cans along the intersection has been removed, and there was no trash can in visual sight except the one at the Seven Eleven mini-mart - which was a 100 meters walk from the bus station. After a short thought, my bus came, so I decided to bring my empty can of coke for a ride until I find the next trash can.
The bus I rode on, was 137, and it went from Ratchada/Sutthisarn Intersection into its depot along Ratchadapisek Road. When I disembarked from the bus to board a new one, I was looking around for a trash can. There was none in sight. So after a short decision, I decided to bring my can of coke for another ride.
This time, the bus went along Ratchadpisek road, and then turned to RamaIX and then into Ramkamhaeng road when I disembarked again along the BigC bus stop. To my dismay, I found out that all the trash cans have mysteriously disappeared again. I walked about 50 meters to the closest 7-11 minimart, and this one has no trash can in front. I've noticed some 7-11 minimart have removed the trash cans from their store especially ones that are in busy stops.
So without a trash can in sight, I decided to walk down the road until I finally found a trash can inside Big-C superstore, and that was the end of my Can of Coke journey.
What I do want to comment is that I'm completely aghasted at the lack of trash cans on the streets of Bangkok. I remember on a similar occsaion, when I strolled down Silom area, there was NO TRASH CAN in the short 2 km walk!
If you are wondering what has happened, let me explain the major reasons why they were removed. The first reason is from our last Bangkok governor Samak complained that the trash cans were eye-sores and had to be removed. The second major reasons was during the APEC meeting, a number of security officers have claimed trash cans to be a bomb-hazard as terrorists can easily hide their bombs in trash cans. With the combination of both these factors, the number of trash cans have progressively been removed from Bangkok.
Strange strange... I wouldn't be surprised if someday Bangkok would be named the litter-bug paradise in Asia. Thinking about it, since we don't have designated trash cans, then it means we can dump it anywhere? Just a satire, I'm not serious on that litterbug part :P
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3 comments:
Sometimes you get a similar problem in Tokyo. Because they sort trash here it's sometimes very difficult to find a trash can for aluminium cans. You can walk quite a while and only find ones for other trash such as bottles, combustable garbage, and uncombustable garbage.
Well, supprizingly most Japanese don't have that problem. Since they always sit down to drink something, as opposed to walking and drinking even if it's from a can, they'll usually be sitting somewhere near a bin. This is sometimes annoying for me since I like to walk and drink, but people here seems to see it as impolite. Well, got to learn the Japanese way!
Thinks about being a homie and brings beer bottles covered in paper bag and walks around in Tokyo ;)
i had a similar issue except trying to find a postbox. about 6 weeks ago i wrote a couple of postcards in koh samui. when i got back to bangkok i tried to mail them... and couldn't find a postbox anywhere! that day i decided to take a ride on the subway, so walked all along sukhumvit, up to phetchaburi, and walked down phetchaburi for quite a away and never found one. did find about 100 telephone booths, though.
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