Pug-Ugly 2: Thai Stakes are High

Paris may not be France but pug-ugly Bangkok epitomises Thailand. As my taxi crossed the great Chao Phraya River and filtered like a shark among red snappers into the city, I had no idea I was in for such a treat. It was nearly ten pm, January 3, 2010, when I caught site of the illuminations still in place since the Thai king’s birthday celebrations back in early December.

Tiny fairy lights, no bigger than large sequins, had been laced around branches of hundreds of roadside trees. It was a magical effect. Aah, I thought as I wiped a tear from an eye. Bangkok! After an absence of 21 years I was finally back in Bangkok.

The taxi-driver quickly wiped out my attack of positive nostalgia. I thought we’d arrived at my destination in Siam Square and we were fairly close. But having agreed to use his meter at the Southern Bus Terminal he demonstrated that legislation to protect consumers had not cured the predatory instincts of Bangkok’s taxi drivers. He pointed ahead as if to say, it’s just there. I went to pay. He looked at my Baht banknotes and whined, ‘Have no change,’ the usual ruse to gouge extra from sucker tourists.

Not only that. He had pointed ahead as if to the entrance to the narrow ‘soi’ (street) where I would find my guesthouse. I paid, he sped off chuckling to himself how he’d out-smarted yet another stupid ‘farang’, as they call all foreigners. But the entrance to the soi was not just ahead. I’d been dumped. So I asked directions of a senior police officer – senior enough to have his own driver - whose car happened to be parked just inside the false entrance to the soi, which was the entrance to business premises. The senior officer couldn’t understand my shaky Thai and neither he nor his driver spoke English.

After a short walkabout I found the soi and my guesthouse, only to discover after a warm welcome that my reserved room had ‘gone’ already. The 12-hour bus ride from Phuket was two hours and forty minutes behind schedule and they assumed I was a ‘no show’. ‘No problem, sir, there is another guesthouse near and tomorrow we give you a free breakfast.’

As I lay on my bed staring at the swishing ceiling fan I told myself, ‘No doubt about it. You’re back in the ruined city of Bangkok.’

Forty-odd years ago they filled in Bangkok’s canals in order to turn waterways into a grid system of roads. The Americans played a big part in this and it must have looked great watching progress from helicopters en route to Laos or Cambodia to fight secret wars related to the main event in Vietnam. As in Vietnam, the Yanks failed again and the grid system led to the chaos that is Bangkok’s traffic. Plus, Bangkok was built on a swamp and subsidence based on weight of concrete poured is endemic. Roads constantly crack, potholes resemble canyons and abandoned buildings are still sinking.

After they had ruined the possibility of a workable road system, city planners caught an endemic disease. ‘Monstrous Building Syndrome’ (MBS) afflicted every architect, foreign or otherwise, and monstrous buildings went up everywhere. If it couldn’t be described as ‘monstrous’ it wasn’t going to get built. To make matters worse they’ve now connected the monstrous buildings by elevated highways. Built over the tops of jammed roads, slip roads provide access and egress but if you don’t have a motor vehicle, don’t expect to get there.

So I said to my mate, Nakhon, as we toured the city in a tuk-tuk driven by an illegal Burmese refugee that he’d found living in a filled in canal tunnel, “It’s as if you Thais believe that only buildings, elevated highways, plus buying and selling cars and houses are the only things that pay. What about infrastructure to match development?”
“It doesn’t pay.”
“Affordable public housing?”
“It doesn’t pay.”
“Health, safety and hygiene?”
“They don’t pay.”
“Pedestrian precincts, places where cars are banned?”
“Only inside shops and shopping malls. Pavements don’t pay, either. Take the one I crawl along every day...”
“Hang on. It’s as if you’re saying, if we farangs want improvements, let us and other foreign investors pay.”
“Now you’re talking.”

To me, the only noticeable improvement has been in Mass Rapid Transport (MRT). Tourists interested in the seedier side of Bangkok smile broadly when they learn that even though these MRT systems are limited in scope, the planners have actually managed to link them up with Bangkok’s three biggest red-light districts. Now that’s pragmatism at it’s very best.

The MRT systems do not go to and from city airports, or to the main railway stations, or to three out of four bus terminals. Try getting to bus terminal Mo Chit 2 with luggage. The elevated railway (Skytrain) goes to Mo Chit 1 station but to get to Mo Chit 2 you either walk about a kilometre across a park, or take a damn taxi.

They may never link up with the new International airport. There are too many powerful vested interests (taxi-mafia?) involved. Guidebooks inform would-be tourists that a train service to the inner city should have been in place by 2008. Some say it will become operable later this year. Nobody should bet on it. But should the Skytrain happen to be going your way it is an air-conditioned pleasure to use.

The downside to it is where they’ve built it. It runs over the top of some of the busiest roads in the city and creates what can only be described as tunnels from hell. Made of concrete, the structure’s base forms a roof over the roads and traps traffic noise and CO2 fumes, which exaggerates the already stifling heat. I suspect that CO2 and noise levels in the tunnels are harmful, which might be why an increasing number of city-dwellers and traffic police wear face masks.

Bangkok is a failed city. Visit it out of curiosity, if you must, but don’t linger because you’ll only serve to make it worse. Oh! It’s just been reported that there are an estimated 400,000 stray dogs in Bangkok and that cases of rabies are on the increase.