Bangkok: The City

Bangkok is hot and humid, which is compounded by the fact that it is a windless city, free of any refreshing breezes to relieve you from the heat and sweat that you accumulate throughout the day. The streets smell of a compilation of body odor, pollution, and an array of aromas rising from the various foods being sold under the hot sun in the street.

From an outsider’s point of view, I feel that everything in Bangkok contradicts itself. The city’s landscape is a mixture of ultra-modern high-rises juxtaposed against older and ill-maintained buildings, and the city’s vegetation grows either as a meticulously maintained urban garden, or uninterrupted in neglected areas. While the city’s greenery is beautiful in all its forms, it is compromised by the background of thick smog that hovers above in the sky and the pollution that is everywhere on the ground and in the water.

The Thai culture here is both well-maintained, yet interrupted by the Starbucks and various other American chains that are found on every other street corner in central areas.

The country runs under the format of a constitutional monarchy, and while the streets are covered in political posters representing various parties, the city is also filled with beautiful shrines dedicated to the king and queen. While citizens retain the right to vote, voicing an opinion against the Royal family could land them in prison.

In Bangkok, we can find beautiful cosmopolitan areas with buildings such as this:


Literally five minutes away from slum neighborhoods that look like this:

To get from one to the other is only a five-minute walk across the extremely polluted river that runs through the city.

During the day, the streets are safe, and street vendors are virtually non-existent save for food. At night, however, the street markets open and the city changes as the daylight fades and the neon lights illuminate in its place. The markets are littered with young prostitutes who look like they could not be older than thirteen, as well as with the older, fatter, white western men who ogle them and give this business the financial backing it needs to survive. As upsetting as this is, I remind myself that that is one of the reasons we are here.