#neo city: the link bangkok

[nct-leetaeyong]

221203 NCT Lee Taeyong at Neo City - The Link in Bangkok Day 1‬‬ © Ballena_azul71 do not edit, crop, or remove the watermark

[neocatharsis]

NCT 127 NEO CITY THE LINK in Bangkok

[jaerontaemo]

Hⓓ Photo: NCT 127 2ND TOUR 'NEO CITY : BANGKOK – THE LINK' Day 2 Waiting Room with Jaehyun, Johnny, Mark

[shining-jaehyun]

photo by AllPodium_jh

neo city the link, bangkok

[techtechonmymind]

you heard them!!!!

[techtechonmymind]

@alidee

x

[everythingnctsub]

N

[N'-]

NCT's Useful Tips

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[viandnyl]

#004-Numcha

Numcha

Singer/Song writer

Bansed in Bangkok, Thailand

Genre:Neo Soul, Indie pop

Instagram：@hewantscoffeebutiamtea

Q: Can you describe the city where you live and based?

I live in downtown called Bangkok, A big city with a terrible traffic Lol

Q: What kind of music is being popular right now where you’re based? I think all kind of music are quite seductive in their self but if I’ve to choose one as a popular now in my country. It might goes to Neo-soul, city pop, alternative and also hip-hop that can find more public favor nowadays.

Q: What did prompt you to start playing music? Flashing back when I was just a little girl, One of a thing that I can firstly recall was my mom, She really loves dancing and she do love jazz music. So I guess I’ve grown my interest in music since then. When my passion grew bigger. I decided to acquire a bachelor degree from college of music. During college year, Good and tough times comes but I’ve learned to deal with it by heart and passion. When I graduated from the college. I’ve been questioning to myself “Where and what I wanna be in this world” so I started to recall things and noticed that I wanted to be an artist. During my life time so far, I’ve been doing everything around the circle but so scared to do the core thing. Then, No more questioning and scaring. The only success will come once you’ve try. That’s why I’m here luckily!

Q: What aspect of your personality haven’t been changed since your childhood? Creative but forgetful hahahaha also being a big eater Lol I love this question!!

Q: Where do you get your inspiration from? For now, I only gain my inspo from myself and things that I’ve been encountered with. Because you can express something that you really really into it genuinely.

Q: Do you have any mentor? And why she or he is your mentor? Yes I have, My musician, my best friend and family is the mentor because they know my things so well Lol and They never scared to admonish me. Also being such a good motivation in my life;-)

Q: Do you have any social issues that you pay attention to recently? And why? Covid-19 is my big deal, My life has changed a lot. I feel trapped, Can’t play my set but tryna learn and deal with it. But when covid-19 is over I do hope playing my lil set there in Japan.(I really love Japan, I’ve been travel to Japan more than 3 times) Also the managing of the Thai government I must say because It linked with well-being as a Thai people. If you’re interested you can go read more of this:-)

Q: Do you have any fashion brands that you like? Beams, Zara, Uniqlo is the fashion brand that I love and wear it oft. Besides, I also enjoyed with purchasing 2nd hand stuff, It’s have like a story in it. 2nd hand stuff are pretty unique and rare for me and yes I really love dressing hahahaha.

Q: Any music genres that you are really into right now? Neo-soul, Alternative indie, Garage rock and Experimental

Q: How/what equipment/gadgets do you use to listen to music? (earphone, headphone etc)

I do love spearker so much, It can build more ambience but sometimes it’s not practical for some situation. Also using the airpods too.

Q: Please tell me a reason for your 3 recommend tracks for ‘MOOD NOW’? 1 Goodnight station - Yogee New Waves I’ve watched their live in Thailand 2 years ago and I feel so calm and warm listening to this song

2 Movie - Tom misch The meaning of this song is really hits me. I love the way Tom wrote it. Go super good with this autumn-winter night vibes.

3 Keep Cold - Numcha (It’s me hahahaha) This is my favorite track ever so I really want you guys go listen to it and share your moment with your loved ones.

Q: What kind of music are you creating now? It’s a hard question to answer ever hahahaha. I think it was picked up from “city pop” and mixed indie vibes but In each track, I do change all the element in my stuff. It depends on what I’ve felt and connected to each song so it can jump anywhere hahaha.

Q: Do you have any forthcoming release of music? See you in the end of October. I’m so excited for thisssss and also at the end of this year I’ll releasing some more festive thing Lol. Stay super tuned! (Nylon Japan, You’re the first one I tell xx)

*This interview was conducted on VI/NYL #004, which published on Dec.30th, 2021.

*All photos are courtesy of the artists.

■VI/NYL

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[kanigarapeach]

Neo Surabaya 2019

Recently, I got hooked up with Neo Surabaya 2091. Siapa mereka? Nggak tau sih siapa di balik account ini. Tapi kalau dilihat berdasar deskripsinya adalah :

Visual Arts Movement from Neon Dystopia City of Surabaya // Cyberpunk // Post-Apocalyptic // Aesthetic Neon Street Photography

For me, that really like everything about post-apocalyptic story, fan-art or movie (of course), these artists is really give me some - apa ya istilahnya? rasa memiliki? Bangga? karena mereka dari Indonesia.

Here some of the photos that I edit based on their thread about how to make your city looks like dystopian-neon city in the future.

Not much, apalagi kalau lihat fan-art yang dikirim ke mereka. Langsung mbatin “Kenapa aku tidak bisa nggambar?! Kenapa?!”

Btw, semua foto diambil dari unsplash.com. Free. Tinggal download. yang penting jangan seenaknya sendiri foto ambil dari unsplash dan diakui jdi foto sendiri yes.

link untuk foto Cityscape of Bangkok Downtown, click here

link untuk foto Japan Taxi, click here

Go check out Neo Surabaya twitter account, if you want to know the details on how to edit the pictures. I’m too lazy to make long ass explanation. LOL

[southeastasianists]

In a cramped café in Bangkok’s Nak Niwat precinct, the coffee could be cursed. Not because the stocky, black brew served up to customers at Ace of Cups is unpleasant. It has more to do with the fact that co-owner Atiwan Kongsorn is clawing through bottles of love potions and other magical concoctions that, one presumes, must be consumed along with a liquid.

Kongsorn, 31, is a gregarious, bubbly host as he guides Southeast Asia Globe through the café’s four storeys. On the ground floor is the self-described ‘witch café’, its décor falling somewhere between a hipster’s blueprint and a mad aunt’s attic. Books on Greek philosophy, ancient Mesopotamia and Oriental mythology rest in coves of exposed brickwork and wooden beams. Two cats – one brown with a zodiac collar, and the other a startling white – are perched on shelves, staring long enough at patrons to make them uncomfortable. A sign hanging from a wall reads: “If you don’t have something nice to say, come and sit next to me”.

The upper floors are flush with a heady dose of magic. The walls on the first floor are covered with Buddhist amulets and small, glass jars of potions – reputed cures for everything from impotency to a sore throat. One floor up is a chillout room, where rituals can be performed and herbal remedies consumed. On the highest floor, through a secret bookcase-covered passageway, is where Kongsorn does tarot card reading and performs spells.    

“I don’t see magic as white and black. I say it’s either positive or negative. And sometimes in life you have to do the negative, like disciplining children,” Kongsorn says. He adds that he refuses requests from customers to perform a curse against another person, but obliges if they want a curse put on themselves to stop a bad habit.

Kongsorn describes himself as a pagan and a Wicca. Also known as Pagan Witchcraft, Wicca was popularised in the 1950s by a retired British civil servant named Gerald Gardner. It is duotheistic, meaning Wiccans worship two deities, typically Mother Goddess and the Horned God, and it can be described as a neo-Pagan, New Age movement or, in fact, a European form of animism.

In 1999, Kongsorn chanced upon a small social group called Siam Wicca. At the time, it was centred around a basic website that translated articles about Wicca into Thai, and a forum where adherents could discuss their beliefs. A few years later, the swelling ranks of the group gravitated to Facebook, where they created a new group called Thailand Pagan Pride. In 2013, Kongsorn and his friends opened the Ace of Cups café.

Many of those who visit the café consider themselves both Buddhists and Wiccas, including Kongsorn. But when asked why he would adopt a European form of animism when Thailand has its own, and how he sees it fitting in with Thailand’s Buddhist culture, Kongsorn is unable to offer an explanation. Perhaps the question has never dawned on him before. Or, perhaps, it just isn’t very important.  

In 2014, Andrew Alan Johnson, an assistant professor of anthropology at Singapore’s Yale-NUS college, published Ghosts of the New City: Spirits, Urbanism and the Ruins of Progress in Chiang Mai, which explored how Buddhist and animist beliefs have been transformed by Thailand’s urbanisation and modernity.

“Globalisation, urbanisation and, especially, capitalism have profound impacts upon small-scale, popular religious practices that we might call animist,” he tells Southeast Asia Globe. “It’s really no surprise; when there are profound changes in how people live their lives and how they see the world, of course they’ll develop a different cosmology.”

One form of this changing cosmology is the introduction of non-native beliefs, such as Wicca. Johnson says it would have been spread by the rise of the internet and the arrival of Western concepts about spirituality and religion that, to some Thais, might appear more cosmopolitan and attractive than local beliefs.

That being said, animism and Buddhism in Thailand have a long history of interaction and appropriation. In 2013, the anthropologist Pattana Kitiarsa published Mediums, Monks and Amulets: Thai Popular Buddhism Today, in which he suggests that for a long time anthropologists viewed magic and superstition as something diametrically opposed to Buddhism. In some ways they are, though this comes down to what some anthropologists call ‘high’ and ‘low’ Buddhism.

In the 1990s, Sulak Sivaraksa, a Thai Buddhist social critic and political scientist, sought to distinguish between what he called Buddhism with a capital ‘B’ and Buddhism with a small ‘b’. The former he considered the state-centred religion in Thailand, dominated by the sangha and closely linked to the ruling elite. The latter was a more societal or cultural understanding of the teachings of Lord Buddha, mostly practised by Thailand’s rural majority, often without the interference of religious structures.

Buddhism with a small ‘b’ can be compared to Pattana’s concept of ‘popular Buddhism’, where “religion converges with the multidimensional structural forces of the nation-state, market economy, modernisation and globalisation.”

Pattana describes popular Buddhism as a “large-scale, cross-social spectrum of beliefs and practices – incorporating the supernatural powers of spirits, deities and magic – that have emerged out of the interplay between animism, supernaturalism, folk Brahmanism, the worship of Chinese deities and state-sponsored Theravada Buddhism”.

Rather than being opposed to animism, popular Buddhism in fact attempts to incorporate many of the superstitions into the faith. In his book, Johnson writes at length about the Pu Sae Nya Sae possession event in Chiang Mai. “This is an old ritual, one where two mediums become possessed by the monstrous spirits of a mountain,” Johnson tells Southeast Asia Globe. The guardian spirits most likely dated from before Buddhism’s entry into Lanna, an Indianised state in present-day northern Thailand that existed between the 13th and 18th centuries. “But the official narrative of the event now places it firmly in a Buddhist context. The story the monks tell is of the Buddha taming and converting these fearsome spirits so that they agree to protect the city rather than menacing its population,” he says.

On the one hand, the appropriation of animist beliefs into the large Buddhist narrative fulfils the role of creating a ‘cross-social spectrum’ which Pattana describes as popular Buddhism. On the other hand, says Johnson, this combination could be a result of animists’ concerns that their beliefs could face disapproval, so they take animist power and give it “a ‘legitimate’ Buddhist face”.

In the 21st century, however, certain animist beliefs not only come up against the hegemony of Buddhism, but also science and reason. At the Pu Sae Nya Sae possession event, Johnson tells of how an announcer said that “science will discover” that these mediums have “nanotechnology”. The meaning of this, Johnson says, is unclear, but what is obvious is “there is an attempt to make mediumship – animism – a part of a scientific worldview in a way that doesn’t diminish it. Is this ‘turning to Western beliefs?’ Not exactly, but it is asserting that there is no conflict.” 

Indeed, where animism once attempted to ‘legitimise’ itself by weaving its beliefs into Buddhism, it will also do the same with science and technology. The rise of Asian horror films, for example, has led to new stories of black-haired girls in white dresses menacing Bangkok’s streets, says Johnson. At the same time, Thai cinema has taken centuries-old folkloric spirits, such as the well-known Mae Nak Phra Khanong, which has been the antagonist of dozens of films, and put them into a modern setting. 

“Similarly, with the Western New Age, we see people who before might describe themselves as having a guardian spirit instead describe themselves as ‘psychic’ or as practitioners of Wicca,” says Johnson. In other words, the belief is the same, just packaged differently.

Despite the social and technological transformations that have taken place in Thailand for decades, there are few signs that animism is fading. Even the prime minister consults spiritual guides and fortune tellers. And just as animist beliefs were adapted and adopted by Buddhism, and vice-versa, the same beliefs will find a way of expressing themselves within the confines of the modern world.

[chanthaburi]

Chantaboon Waterfront Community in Chanthaburi offers a much-welcomed reminder of life away from all those gadgets

IN THESE days of ever-more rapid information technology, the connections we have to places and people are at risk of being lost. An abundance of information is constantly popping up on our personal screens, telling us where to go, what to do and who to meet, resulting in a disassociation from the physical and psychological realities of daily life.

To reclaim some of what we have lost, my friends and I take a walk along Chantaboon Waterfront Community in Chanthaburi Province. Here, in the province’s oldest area, the Christian church, Chinese shrine, Buddhist temple and old houses lining the waterfront serve up a big dose of reality. A bowl of rice noodles topped with garlicky Mantis shrimp is, for me at least, way more real than the best photos of noodle dishes flying around the social media.

“Can I have two more bowls? Please. An army marches on its stomach,” Pla, my travel companion, asks the vendor even though our “army” will only be covering a few kilometres at most. 

In fact, the old waterfront of Chanthaburi River is barely a kilometre long, flowing north to south from Tha Luang Bridge to the Catholic Church. The right bank is lined with old wooden houses and timeworn European-style mansions. The left bank is home to the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception – Thailand’s largest Catholic Church. The cathedral, with its two towers, is visible from anywhere along the Chanthaburi River waterfront and much like a giant mother hen, guards her chicks on both sides of the river.

“The Chantaboon community, which was once clearly marked on nautical charts, was an important trading port,” says local guide Krit Phetchang. “It was a meeting point for Thais, Chinese and Vietnamese who traded and exchanged wild produce and spices. Chantaboon was also a strategic location for the French during the Franco-Siamese War of 1893.”

We stop at the church to admire the neo Gothic house of God. Built in 1909, the cathedral celebrated its centennial eight years ago. In fact, the Christianity arrived at the waterfront 300 years ago, when farmers and merchants started trading alongside the river. The present cathedral was built on the site of a chapel constructed in 1711. The chapel is huge and peaceful, and the stained-glass windows are impressive. The statue of the Virgin Mary at the front is decorated with more than 200,000 sapphires – a fitting link between the faith of the locals and city’s gem trade. 

From the cathedral, we cross the bridge to the right bank of the Chanthaburi River. 

Just as in Hoi An in Vietnam, Takua Pa in Thailand’s South and other ancient ports, the residents of Chanthaburi waterfront started trading peppers, scented woods, wildlife hides and rubber sheets with foreign merchants. Today, the one kilometre-long street still includes many private homes and the emerging art galleries, coffee shops and tasty snack stalls entice visitors over the weekends.

It is a place of contrasts too, with two very different types of architecture, both of them charming.

The first and the more lavish are the colonial style mansions owned by the royal servants with their sculpted clay ornaments. Then there are the wooden houses with intricate lace-like wooden facades favoured by the wealthy merchants. 

“People of Chanthaburi are recognised for their wealth,” notes the local guide. “The rich sent their children to study in Bangkok or Penang and George Town in Malaysia.

“Unfortunately, the younger generation abandoned their family homes along the waterfront and settled in other towns. Some of the old houses are rented out. Others have been sold off and still more have fallen into disrepair.”

Walking through the old Chantaboon waterfront is an act of discovery in itself. About midway along, surrounded by wooden house and timeworn mustard-coloured mansions, the visitor comes across a Chinese shrine. An open space – where motorcycle taxies wait for their clients – morphs into a “game centre” from time to time, as locals square off around a chess board. At the northern end, artists add colour to the timeworn buildings and walls with graffiti and stencils.

“The Chanthaburi waterfront is full of beautiful contradictions,” says Krit, our guide.

We couldn’t agree more. Original and wonderfully real, the Chantaboon waterfront is the perfect location to reconnect with place and people.

The Nation 1 March 2017 http://www.nationmultimedia.com/news/travel/30307549

[nct-leetaeyong]

221203 NCT Lee Taeyong at Neo City - The Link in Bangkok Day 1‬‬ © Ballena_azul71 do not edit, crop, or remove the watermark

[neocatharsis]

NCT 127 NEO CITY THE LINK in Bangkok

[jaerontaemo]

Hⓓ Photo: NCT 127 2ND TOUR 'NEO CITY : BANGKOK – THE LINK' Day 2 Waiting Room with Taeyong, Jungwoo, Yuta

[shining-jaehyun]

photo by liebe_jd

neo city the link, bangkok

[techtechonmymind]

doyoung literal going 😱 sjajdhdkjajs