Arrival

My vision of what my first blast of Bangkok would be like was way off. The new international airport is enormous and rivals in ostentation anything I’ve ever seen in the West. Everything was streamlined: immigration, baggage handling, customs. We were met by the hotel limo and driven into town along an equally brand new multilane highway under a dismal drizzle, flanked the whole way by an as yet uncompleted elevated tram line, and we might as well have been driving into Chicago. All we could see were enormous skyscrapers, many of them under construction, so many billboards they haven’t yet been able to fill all of them, and signs for every franchise imaginable: Casio, Minolta, Office Depot, Boston Acoustic. 

It was still raining when we pulled off the highway at breakneck speed and swerved up the driveway to the Swiss Lodge, where we were greeted sweetly by more of these gracious girls who after an hour or so of our hanging around in their business center, calling home to report our safe landing, gave us a room: a suite, really, with every imaginable comfort, where we showered and fell into a seven-hour sleep, followed by a stroll along the teeming streets lined with foodstalls of every description, up into an enormous mall, and finally back to the hotel for dinner. 

It’s warm but not uncomfortably so; it’s the humidity that gives everyone a parboiled look. Debbie has come down with a cold, but hopes to be rid of it soon, and tomorrow I hope to persuade her to accompany me to the vast Saturday market. I am already sniffing around at the Buddhist paintings they sell everywhere, some of them very beautiful, but will try to adhere to my rule of not buying anything during the first month we’re here. H

I had another of those amputated-limb feelings about Dad, pausing at a stall selling the kind of shirts he loved before remembering he has no use for one. He would be fascinated by what has become of Thailand. Despite the huge changes since I was here 50 years ago not only in Bangkok but in myself, I am already reminded of our family trips here in the 50s. But my first impression is that these people have gone from a civil indifference about the West to a ravenous hunger for the hazardous blessings of unbridled capitalism; and they are going to be very polite about eating the pitiable rest of us for breakfast.