A City of Contrasts

Published on February 17, 2008

    In what seems like an alarmingly short time, Bangkok has gone from paddy fields to skyscrapers. It's a chaotic city but one that never fails to fascinate and bewilder. And despite its calamitous contradictions, many foreigners feel at home here, reluctant to consider leaving.

Author Maryvelma O'Neil finds Bangkok impossibly alluring and enigmatic. "Bangkok is a city that teems with paradox," she says.

    "Pleasure is always counter-pointed by its opposite. Tinkling brass bells in hundreds of Buddhist temples alternately enchant with their jingle and irritate with their jangle. It's like suddenly spotting a swirling rainbow in an oily puddle only to have it disappear just as quickly," she says.

    O'Neil's recently published book "Bangkok: A Cultural and Literary History" has just hit the stores. It's part of the "Cities of Imagination" series, which captures the rich artistic, cultural and literary heritage of the world's favourite cities. The series has been described by the Independent as "stylish, readable cultural guides that elegantly fill the gap between history and handbook".

    O'Neil tries her best to reconstruct the city as it has been portrayed by insiders and outsiders by focusing on 15 themes. These include famous landmarks, sites of historical importance and places that best reveal its symbolic dimensions.

    "Choosing them was the first major task but I threw myself into it - reading everything, clipping articles, talking to informed sources. The Siam Society Library was a great resource."At the National Library I discovered King Rama VI's manuscripts and then happened upon the few miniature buildings from his toyland-democracy experiment of Dusit Thani which was a marvellous, highly original project. I was unfailingly received with the utmost generosity by Thais," she says.

    While researching, she made some serendipitous discoveries, like the lovely Victorian menu for a feast hosted by Prince Prisdang Jumsai at the Oriental Hotel on September 19, 1888. She passed it along to his great-nephew, and the fabulous meal was reprised last year and is now slated as an annual event.

    O'Neil's first taste of Bangkok, in many ways typical of travellers' accounts through history, was not a pleasant one. Standing in the noxious blue-grey fumes of Lan Luang Road, she agreed on a trip with a tuk-tuk driver who, she quickly realised, must have been "a bat out of hell in a former life".

    As the tut-tuk rattled away, "suddenly the brooding sky poured thick sheets of monsoon rain upon us. We skidded along greasy asphalt streets, as water repellent as an old cast-iron skillet under the kitchen faucet." Then, the driver tried a popular dodge: "You go tailor shop with me. You get cheap suit. Me get free gas. What you say, boss?" "Okay," she yelled back.

    On her way back to the hotel, O'Neil hailed a cab whose Isaan (northeastern) driver was apparently clueless as to the location of the Royal Princess Hotel. "For the next hour and a half we stopped at almost all the Royal This or Royal That hotels which abound in a capital that's home to a very large royal family. Every time we drove up to the front door of yet

another wrong place, he broke out into a giddy, high-pitched chortle."

    O'Neil soon learned to go with the flow as she gradually got the hang of the sanuk culture. Yet it was in the chaotic Thonglor wet market that she discovered the sheer scope of Thai optimism.

    "There, while watching languid cats ignore scurrying rats, and a fishmonger with an eel-like fish around her neck emit a 1,000-watt smile, I was suddenly and quite unexpectedly overcome by a surge of complete and utter abandonment ... of being alive. That's what Bangkok does to you. At that moment, I thought of an intriguing observation Henry James made in his 1882 book 'The Point of View' of how a traveller's impressions could mutually conflict to reveal joy."

    She finds the old and new Bangkoks equally intriguing and says the sense of history is present in both. "You can still see traces of passage - of people, of their spiritual and material influences."

    And Old Bangkok's former waterborne life is still omnipresent, even though much of it has been transplanted onto land.

    "Sometimes I imagine the vendors on the sidewalks as if they were still on the klongs. The names of so many streets reflect the centrality of water to Siamese culture. Driving a car here, one has the sensation of being on a boat as cars stream in an out of lanes. And from the Skytrain you can still spot charming vestiges of the 19th century."

    Perhaps, she says, Bangkok's past waterborne culture has left its mark on modern Thai life. She compares the flexibility of urban folks and their ability to balance extremes in times of uncertainty to the way their forebears would ride out storms in rough waters. Yet the cruel inequalities of life here should have been better sorted out, she says.

    "Of course, I am distressed about the great economic disparities in a city where the minimum wage is Bt194 per day while the streets are full of luxury cars. I see the long, hard working day for many ordinary people and sense its toll on their health, and their family and personal relations. People here have highly developed coping mechanisms but the social costs are quite evident.

    "Every time I am at the SiamBTS stop, I miss the Siam Intercontinental Hotel - an evocation of the 'city in a garden' that Bangkok once was. I don't understand why more local architects haven't looked to the greener, amphibious past of Bangkok to find prototypes instead of putting up more concrete monsters. The riverscape seems to have been further developed in the past few years with no concern for aesthetics or environmental governance."

    But despite these criticisms, O'Neil is happy to be in Bangkok today."In a world that is tending more and more to a generic blandness, it still stands out as a place of extraordinary allure. Chaiyo Siam!"


"Bangkok" will be launched at the
FCCT on February 20, at 7.30 pm.



by Manote Tripathi

The Nation