bicycle ride through bangkok - songkhran 2015

yanhee pinoys' songkhran party 2015

K as in kilig

Yeah… I’m dancing!

Earlier in life I discovered that both my feet were… left. Well, that’s how people who can’t dance want to describe themselves. My upbringing in a community that shunned dancing is partly to blame though. Now at the homestretch of my 5^th decade in life, I have taken up ballroom dancing and I get pumped up with adrenaline the moment I step on the dance floor. (This intro is really getting in my nerves, coz I really wouldn’t want to get caught dead on a ballroom dance floor).

To set things straight, let me clarify that the ‘ballroom’ is the maze of Bangkok’s infamously mean streets and the ‘dance’ is on board a contraption that was never in the mind of the guy who invented the wheel - way back in the Stone Age.

Blame it on “plantar fasciitis” – a malady that transforms agile runners into limping retards, the BIKE was actually a solution to a weight gain problem and the actual brakes on the downhill slide into a sedentary lifestyle.

Never in my mind – while shopping for the bike, would I ever discover that one day I would build up the rhythm to love the streets (and the cars) of Bangkok. Never would I imagine that I can waltz, tango, hip-hop or swing with the cars while either at a complete standstill in rush-hour traffic or as they zoom past me at 80km/hr.

Breakdance would be nice, and I tried it once when I was forced to crash my bike on the pavement to prevent it from hitting a taxi cab that chose to block my path without warning. A scar on my left knee is a reminder that this kind of dance is not without consequences.

The wind on my face, the gallop of the heart in the climb at Phra Pinklao bridge, the “sawasdee khrub” greeting by other bikers, the smoke from bus exhausts and the aches after doing 30 kilometers are just some of the few things that make me love this ‘ballroom dancing.’

Let it rain or let the sun shine hot… and I’ll still be dancing – yeah!