Blog: Bangkok

Tourist traps, floating markets and mall food courts

While our first full day in Southeast Asia, in Ayutthaya, was one of the best days of the trip, our second was one of the worst. The activities changed from interesting, pretty places filled with Thai people who were fascinating to watch, to dull, overly commercial places filled with Western tourists.

Bangkok: the Las Vegas of Asia

Bangkok evokes, to me, what I imagined of the anarcho-capitalist cities depicted in cyberpunk novels like Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash. In the lawless cities of the future in these books, housing and shopping developments barricade themselves behind fortifications and private security, the only way to stay safe. Bangkok is far from lawless, but our hotel nevertheless had security guarding its gates to the street, and a restaurant we visited was located in a small shopping center surrounded along with its parking lot by a gated wall.

The city has developed so quickly and become so commercialized that many sections of main road simply pass mall after mall situated right next to one another. There are few pedestrians, with most tourists riding around in taxis and most locals using motorbikes. For those who do try to brave a short walk, the sidewalks are narrow and poorly maintained, and in many areas practically nonexistent, while traffic does not even stop reliably for red lights.

The closest analogy in the United States is the Las Vegas strip, a similarly tourist-centered fake environment.

It's all relative

The Safeway at 17th and R streets in Dupont Circle is derisively known as the "Soviet Safeway," due to its being frequently out of many items. Its defenders point out that it is, after all, one of the smallest supermakrets in the city.

I finally visited it the other day, and it may be small by DC standards, but compared to New York supermarkets, it's a cornucopia of diverse products and low prices. Sure, the stock was a bit thin on a few items, but nothing to the degree one would find at my local Food Emporium or an Upper East Side D'Agostino's. And the groceries were so cheap!

Likewise, when signing up to rent this apartment, the previous tenant explained how parking was ample during the day, but difficult to find on evenings or weekends. I've now parked 3-4 times a day for a week, and it's true, if by "ample" you mean "about two spaces available per block" and "difficult to find" you mean "requires driving around for a few blocks first." I just assumed the Manhattan definition of "hard to park," i.e. "you have to drive around for half an hour to find a single space."

Yes, it's all relative. The supermarkets here may be barren and the parking scarce compared to Palo Alto, California, but I'm moving from Manhattan. Everything's cheap, from rent to insurance to groceries, from that point of view.

The day we got back from Bangkok - the most crowded, polluted, and overrun-with-malls city I've ever been to, and the fifth least green and livable city in the world - we walked around the Upper West Side. Some of the terms that came to mind: "calm," "spacious," and "not so many stores." Not how Manhattan is typically described.

Yes, it's all relative.

posted on Oct 16, 2007 10:22 pm (comment)

tags: Bangkok, Dupont Circle, New York, Washington

Tourist traps, floating markets and mall food courts

Bangkok: the Las Vegas of Asia

It's all relative

Blog Archives

Most Popular Tags