Darling, I just have to say it: why does every other street corner in Thailand feel like the set of a low-budget horror film?
I mean it. I could be walking home from the gym, sweating glitter, minding my own business, when suddenly—BAM! A broken spirit house, dumped unceremoniously by the footpath. Next to it? A decaying garland and a cracked doll in traditional Thai costume, staring directly into my soul.
And let’s not even begin with the trees. If it’s not a banyan tree with fraying fabric strips wrapped around its trunk like some ghostly couture, it’s a bodhi tree whose roots have literally ruptured the pavement, turning the public walkway into an obstacle course. One moment you’re strolling, the next you’re dodging a pothole big enough to host a séance.
I was living in Europe before, and let me tell you—I never had to cross the street because someone had tied a red ribbon to a tree and left a tray of Fanta for a ghost. Here? It’s practically a Tuesday.
What’s even more eerie isn’t the offerings themselves—it’s the social silence around them. Everyone sees them. Everyone avoids them. But no one moves them. No one asks why they’re there or who’s going to clean them up. Because of course, no one wants to be that person. You know, the one who disrespected the spirit and is now cursed with a mysterious rash and two weeks of bad traffic.
And don’t get me wrong—I’m not dismissing belief systems. Spirituality is one thing. But public hygiene and urban safety are another. When a tree’s been allowed to grow unchecked for so long that it’s breaking concrete, and instead of calling a city planner, we decide to put a mini temple next to it—we are no longer a city. We are a shrine with traffic.
And then the ultimate question: who is responsible? Who’s meant to clear away the mouldy offerings, the half-sipped sodas, the torn silk scarves now faded to ghostly beige? The municipality? The person who made the offering?
In the end, what we’re seeing isn’t reverence. It’s abandonment. It’s fear disguised as respect. It’s spiritual littering that no one dares touch.
So next time you walk down a cracked footpath lined with rotting incense sticks and silent dolls, just remember: the real haunting isn’t the spirits—it’s our refusal to say, “This isn’t normal.”
And yes, I crossed the street. Again.