The young woman stared blankly into the middle distance. At 6:30 a.m. there was no particular reason to be sitting on the steps of a shuttered shop house along Bangkok's Sukhumvit Road, her arms draped over a few belongings in shopping bags, except that she was homeless.
Unlike the beggars I usually see in dirt-streaked rags by the side of one of Bangkok's busiest streets, this woman looked as if she had only recently lost her home. There was a flash of shock and trauma, instead of despair, in her eyes.
