Sounds of Sam Rhong actually, a suburbish place just outside Bangkok. We live on the sixth floor and have three balconies through which the surrounding sounds fill our apartment and have become welcomed sounds of home.
I say suburbish, because it’s not a city, but sounds like a city…maybe not even a city. Let me explain. Every night is like a concert of various sounds…many of which we can’t exactly explain.
First there is this xylophone (I never thought I would write that word:) music that we hear every night. A solo xylophonist practicising? Hmm…Some nights there’s karaoke, very catchy different music butchered by some wanna be singer(s). These music sounds are constantly interrupted by unitelligable yelling in thai. Domestic problems? Very excited people?
Animals. Roosters, they roost at sunrise right? WRONG, all day and all night. Dogs, they go crazy every night, like a pack of werewolves in a full moon…waking us in the night, they sound like they’re killing each other or some other very loud animal…we think to ourselves, ‘at least they won’t be making noise tommorow’, wrong again!
The strange/cool part is we’ve become accustomed to these sounds, a unique mix probably only ever to be associated with apartment 601.
Sounds like when I lived in Surat--I'd wake up to the dogs, scared in the macchar daani (mosquito net) and then realize what it was and then drift off, likewise with roosters. Roosters are very idealized in children's farm books I must say. Sounds and smells--two things that can instantly allow time travel as well as place faster than even flue powder.
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