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Bangkok Wonderous and Woeful
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By John Hoskin
 Bangkok is not a beautiful city.
But it is unquestionably a captivating one, exerting an irresistible
charm as the epitome of all things Thai.Alec Waugh got it right in his 1970 book on the Thai capital:
"Bangkok has been loved," he wrote, "because it
is an expression of the Thais themselves, of their lightheartedness,
their love of beauty, their reverence for tradition, their sense
of freedom, their extravagance, their devotion to their creed
-- to characteristics that are constant and continuing in themselves." |
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The characteristics seem contradictory,
but Bangkok is a huge paradox, at once wondrous and woeful. For
this it is one of the world's most distinctive cities, a place
that fascinates by making innumerable contradictions seem consistent.
It is at once chaotic and serene, ancient and modern, sacred
and profane, pandering to nouveau riche greed and proudly caring
of traditional values... the oddities are as endless as they
are real.
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The key to understanding Bangkok
is to realize that beneath its modern facade it remains unmistakably
Thai, traditional and essentially unchanging. Ultimately, the
city is simply itself and you have to accept it as such if you
are ever going to come to terms with it. The horrendous traffic
congestion is perhaps everyone's biggest complaint, but even
for those who complain, cars in Thailand are not firstly a means
of transport, they are social cachets which once obtained are
not to be relinquished lightly.
Traffic congestion is part and parcel
of the Bangkok experience, and it is easier to accept when you
realize it is not going to change. Nor is it new. There never
were any halcyon days before the canals were filled in to make
way for paved roads. Here's Queen Victoria's envoy Sir John Bowring
on the hazards of Bangkok's then waterborne traffic: "Boats
often run against one another, and those within them are submerged
in the water...The constant occurrence of petty disasters seems
to reconcile everybody to their consequences." That was
in the 1850s but the idea of being reconciled to the inevitable
hassles of city traffic remains true today.More
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