Bangkok Views
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- Category: Blog Friday - Steve
Bangkok, is for me, the Paris of the east; highly overrated, the traffic is terrible and while you can have an excellent meal you can also have some pretty duff ones too.
Firstly getting anywhere is a nightmare. Taxi drivers don’t want to take you because they do not feel like it and the tuk-tuk drivers are outraged that you actually want to go to your stated destination rather than one of the various “gem” and “antique” shops they are in league with. To be fair they are at least cheap when metered, but otherwise they assume you should be paying at least four times the going rate and are more than happy to leave three overheating children and their parents on the pavement if you disagree. The skytrain is excellent, assuming you have not died of heat exhaustion getting to it.
Bangkok’s traffic jams are of course legendary and rightly so. London can produce a good jam, but not on the daily awesomeness of Bangkok. If Beelzebub needed to update one of the levels of hell a Bangkok traffic jam could be an interesting starting point.
This all means the average street scene has the ambience of Heathrow’s busiest runway; 100+ decibels and air you can cut with a knife. The joy of an urban stroll is also hindered as the delightfully picturesque tourist map fails to mention the six lane highway between you and your destination. This leads to a delightfully picturesque detour via numerous flights of stairs and the teeming skytrain station.
I do like cities. We’ve chosen to live and bring up our children in central London. But there is something about Bangkok, especially with small children that is just very hard work.
Finally, to be honest, I find the endless parade of old European men with much younger Thai ladies all a bit, well, sad.
I should temper this polemic by saying Bangkok obviously has some delightful sites. Some people love it, my wife included. The people are lovely, even the taxi drivers as they fleece you do it with a smile. To be fair the food is good, but not as good as everyone says (back to the Paris parallel). Perhaps I’m missing something; perhaps it will grow on me. But for now I’m really not getting on with Bangkok.
