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| Bangkok Diary by Anvar Alikhan |
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People say that Bangkok has a Blade Runner-ish quality about it. But I think a more appropriate metaphor would be Red Bull, the energy drink: hyperkinetic, youthful, hip, edgy and somehow nocturnal. It’s almost too much of a coincidence that Red Bull was invented here. Originally named ‘Red Buffalo’, pumped full of caffeine and taurine, and drunk by Thai blue-collar workers, it was discovered by Dietrich Mateschitz, an Austrian expat, who hit on the idea of marketing it globally. Today he and his Thai partner are both on the Forbes list of billionaires.
Today’s Bangkok is, of course, both the cause and the result of the Thai economic story. From the mid-’80s Thailand was one of the world’s two fastest growing economies, growing at a nearly 10 per cent for 10 consecutive years. Then came 1997 and the speculative attack on the baht. And as the Thais say bitterly, the US, whom they’d supported so staunchly through the Cold War, just watched as global financial institutions pulled the plug on their economy. In contrast, they point out, when South Korea began to wobble shortly after, US strategic interests were threatened and the US Treasury discreetly ‘advised’ the same institutions to support them. That was when the Chinese quietly offered Thailand a $1 billion aid package, an example of the masterly diplomatic game they’re playing in the region. But, mainly, it took enormous sacrifices by the Thai people—exhorted to patriotic fervour by their revered King Bhumibol—to pull the country out of the crisis. Today the baht which, in 1997, was 25 to the dollar before tumbling to nearly 60, has slowly, painfully, clawed its way back to about 35 to the dollar. The memories of 1997 are still raw.
Rants and Raves
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Thai women, with their angular cheekbones, doe eyes and svelte figures, must be among the most beautiful in the world. But of the 10 most beautiful ‘women’ we saw on our trip, at least two were actually katoeys, or lady-boys. The katoeys are, like the hijras, a third sex, with a traditional place in society that goes back 2,000 years. But unlike the poor hijras, they are ravishingly beautiful, and katoey beauty contests, like the annual Miss Tiffany’s contest, can attract as much media coverage as the Miss Thailand show. We went to see Tiffany’s famous cabaret, and the katoeys on stage were each more exquisite than the other. One of them did (in a tribute to the power of Bollywood) a spectacular Dola Re Dola Re dance number that could easily put Aishwarya Rai out of business.
Katoeys are often taller than Thai men (perhaps a side-effect of the Klinefelter’s Syndrome that causes their condition). And they can be superbly athletic. One of the country’s top volleyball teams is apparently a team of katoeys, and watching a gang of katoeys in their clicking stiletto-heels and mini-skirts shoot it out in a pool parlour is like watching a scene from The Color of Money.
Rants and Raves
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Bangkok’s Oriental Hotel is a regular fixture on any list of the ‘World’s Ten Best Hotels’. Officially speaking, it was built in 1876 (a quarter of a century before Mumbai’s Taj), but unofficially it’s even older, because the earlier records are lost. It’s been the haunt of famous authors like Joseph Conrad, Somerset Maugham, Noel Coward and Graham Greene (among others). Conrad used to booze in its new-fangled ‘American bar’ in the 1880s and Maugham nearly died of malaria in one of its rooms. Graham Greene, after a visit, wrote to the manager saying the Oriental was a place "where almost anything may happen and one may meet almost anybody from a mere author to an international crook on his way somewhere"—typically, a place where a tense, atmospheric scene from one of his novels might have taken place.
The Oriental has used its literary heritage well, and turned its original 130-year-old building into what’s now called the ‘Author’s Residence’ wing, with sumptuously restored—and sumptuously priced—suites, named after Conrad, Maugham, Coward and James Michener. Other suites are dedicated to Greene, John LeCarre, Norman Mailer and Gore Vidal. There’s also, alas, a ghastly rose-pink suite dedicated to Barbara Cartland, who apparently began one of her novels here; they’d do well to redecorate and rename it after Paul Theroux, another aficionado. Some years ago the Oriental initiated the South East Asian Writers award, in a quest to produce the successors to the Somerset Maugham-Joseph Conrad tradition. They’re still working at it.
Rants and Raves
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Thai, like Chinese, is a tonal language, which makes it so hard for any speaker of European or Indic languages to learn. Each ‘word’ can have five completely different meanings, depending on the precise tone in which it’s said. For example "Mai mai mai mai mai" (each syllable said in its own appropriate tone) means "New wood does not burn, does it?"
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