Bangkok
spreads out before you as you approach it from the airport by taxi,
inching along the horizon the closer you get. It is a vast cityscape, a sprawling, awe provoking metropolis. A forest of gargantuan
structures take up your whole field of vision. Over 1000 sky scrapers
lurch up towards the hazy, ash-grey polluted sky. It feels dramatic, it
looks powerful. Your are in the East, entering the mighty city of
Bangkok. It is huge, Bangkok is a mega city, the term I believe
generally used for a city who's population is roughly over ten
million people. Now, in order to recall the rest
of my personal experience of Bangkok clearly, a minuscule history
will need to be brought to mind in the first instance.
Bangkok
the capital city of Thailand, began life as a market town originally
settled under the Kingdom of Ayutthaya on the Chao Phraya river
which runs through the city today. The 'Kingdom' was essentially a
bunch of principalities under the King of Ayutthaya. In the 1700's
the Kingdom was invaded and ransacked by a Burmese invasion. Much of
their art, temples and literature was tragically lost. The Burmese
withdrew within the same year to concentrate on their war with the
Chinese. Chaos reigned in the confusion after and a General Phraya
Tak (who became king Taskin) fought the remaining Burmese and
established the capital of Thonburi. General Chao
Phraya Chakri who later became King Rama established the capital of
Rattanosokin across the river from Thonburi. So where Bangkok is
today was the site of two capital cities. King Rama mounted a coup
against Taskin and became King in 1782. Today the ruins of the old
city of Ayutthaya are preserved as a UNESCO world heritage site and
thus King Rama became the founder of the modern Bangkok we know
today. In the 1800's Bangkok heavily industrialised. There was
a huge population boom in the 60's then came the Asian Investment
boom in the 80's as multi-national corporations put there head
quarters in Bangkok. Today Thailand is known as one of the Asian
'tiger cub' economies and as we know is heavily export driven.
Now,
please forgive my nose-wrinkingly crude history but I feel it is
necessary to be glanced at to really get across how how rapidly the
city has undergone massive socio-economic change. The history shows
how precious what is left of the old Ayutthaya Kingdom is and how it
sits jewel like among the rushed concrete of modernity. To my mind
this seems summed in the image of the infamous head of a Buddha
statue in the old Ayutthaya city that has had the roots of a bodhi
tree grow and wrap around it. In the same way the roots of modernity
have enveloped the old city and the old temples. The future, the new, is squashed right up to the old.
The new
Bangkok of today is a brave new world, far removed from it's past.
All the major consumer culture symbols are present in the city today.
You are never far from the yellow glow of the golden arches of
McDonald's and the homogeneity, the predictability, the repeated
nature, of western consumer culture. Conspicuous consumption, the
buying of consumer goods to display social status is prevalent. The
Siam Paragon shopping mall in Bangkok is one of the largest in Asia,
with over 270 shops and ten floors it is of dizzying proportions. As
a man who can feel overwhelmed in Tesco's when it's busy on a Saturday I was glad
not to have gone, but noting it's presence in the city displays the
cultural and historic shift that has taken place. It seems apt at
this point to quote Zygmund Bauman when he wrote about the 2011
English Riots, “the fullness of consumer enjoyment means fullness
of life. I shop, therefore I am. To shop or not to shop, this is the
question.” And remember, in the world of today, "if you don't have an I-phone, well, you don't have an I-phone." I think that the enormity of the mall sums up the disparity of the Bankgkok of
the past and the Bangkok of today. A pervasive consumerism is part of
the new Bangkok, a Bangkok of hyper modernisation and consumption.
Of the
old then, and the Ayutthaya past, the Temple of the Golden Buddha was
to my mind the most impressive. At some point, before the Burmese invasion
the statue was covered in plaster to prevent it being stolen. It
wasn't until 1955 that by accident the plaster was chipped by and the secret golden statue inside was re-discovered. It is
the worlds largest golden statue. When you see it you can imagine some
villain out of a Indiana Jones film scheming to steal it. It sits
knowingly in the temple, in the lotus position, in it's true form,
utterly resplendent. Gold on that scale does not look tacky, it has a
curious, glorious warmth to it. It conveys the sense that there is
something more to us, something as brilliant as the glint of the
light of the golden form. The temple walls are adorned in a beautiful
and ornate hand painted pattern. To reflect on the patience and
presence of mind it must have taken to paint is truly humbling. You
get the sense stood in the temple with your bare feet flat on the
mindfully cleaned floor, watching the statue glint under the dome of
the meticulously painted walls that the statue was perhaps made by men with
higher minds.
As is normal with most cities the 'palace
next to the slum' scenario occurs in Bangkok. The poor sit at the rich man's
gates. You can see lame dogs limp among the flashing lights of the
strip clubs and dirty children sleep on the street. Drunks lay asleep
hunched over on the steps to shops. Graffiti, a global phenomenon is
present on some bare walls. Bangkok is a city of exoticism, it is sin
city. Your are constantly invited by men with a long list of sinful
acts to go see a 'ping pong' show. He will do this by accompanying
his proposition with an amusing 'pop-pop' noise. Men constantly offer
porn dvd's in the street, stalls sell rows of sex paraphernalia.
There are strip club all over the place and of course there are the
lady boys.
To walk
around Bangkok is to experience sensory overload. There is the noise,
the din of the traffic, the constant beep of cars, the whistle of
the traffic controllers and the shrill noise of the smaller engines
of the tuk-tuks. The crash of the sky train meandering like a snake
maybe 25 foot above you. The hum of people talking everywhere on phones, market men loudly advertising their products (it seems if
they is a space on the pavement not constantly occupied by
pedestrians someone will set up a stall there), large adverts on t.v
screens can be heard and seen, looking ghostly above the urban
landscape. Then there is the smell, food seems to get cooked in every
crevice and cranny available and wafts tantalisingly into the
streets. You feel the heat. It's not just hot it's the mugginess, the
closeness of the heat is draining, the city essentially acts as a
microwave. Then there is the the visual overload. The people of
Bangkok live cheek by jowl. They hang from the rafters. Its an
anthill. People! People are everywhere. People brushing past you,
people passed out and homeless sat next to the pavement. Groups of
people huddled around fuzzy t.v's down alley ways. People cooking,
eating selling, buying. It's thrilling to just walk down the street
and the city feels alive.
There was
a night market near our hotel and I spent a good evening strolling
through it. Now, I do not know whether this can be verified as a
quantifiable, statistical truth however I have a deep inking that
there may indeed be more fake watches in Bangkok than people. The
shelves were full of knock of clothes, 'adides' t-shirts and the
like. You can buy fake headphones, some unbelievably well faked
trainers, fake hair dryers, everything and anything for anyone. For those with a
warped and evil propensity towards violence knuckle dusters, knives,
throwing knives, daggers, flick knives, tazer's, swords and replica
air guns are all readily available to the discerning customer. Other stalls sell jewellery, pictures, and statues and mugs etc. From the stalls row
upon row of mass produced Buddha's stare blankly at you from the
stall after stall.
Earlier I referred to
Bangkok as a brave new world, the title of Aldous Huxley's famous
dystopian novel. The title, 'Brave New World' comes from a moment in
the novel when the main protagonist Bernard Marx repeats ironically
to himself the Shakespeare line “O brave new world,
That has such people in it.” The line is taken from Shakespeare's
the Tempest and is a line by a character called Miranda who after
living a quiet and subdued life on an island sees civilisation for
the first time and exclaims in wonder "How beauteous mankind is!
O brave new world, That has such people in't!" The line in the
Tempest is also ironic as all she can see are some drunken sailors,
however it is the wonderment and amazement that the line is exclaimed
in that I think best optimistically sums up my very short experience
of Bangkok. "How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world, That
has such people in't!"
