Bangkok; Take 2

A day passes.

And Bangkok has shifted. It has heaved its great wollowing centre to the forefront, to remind me that first impressions are not always right.

The scent of wealth, like expensive perfume has crystalized to form buildings. They push out the heavy pungent air, that clings and wheezes its moisture into your lungs. Department stores fight a battle to hold their own cloudless air and scented patrons away from the dirty potholes and the beggers. Alongside the fountains and the chandalliers are delapidated temples and monks, who are given priority seats on trains and offered alms each morning. The great hurling motor ways have winding streets, leading off them. Streets filled with greenery and vendors selling fresh fruit juices and spicy Thai food in market stalls.

This is a city of many worlds. This is globalization; condensed into a living, breathing, farting, fucking, flying city. It is not always pretty. And although the different worlds are intimately connected, it is difficult to move between them - not physically, but mentally. It is a place where the wealthy travel in a sky train from one air conditioned pad to the next. It is also a place where you can buy sandelwood incense from a Middle Eastern shop, a frappucino from a Starbucks and fill your home with jasmine, thanks to the little old lady sat on the end of the street at midnight, with her two half naked children.

Excess and poverty side by side. Perhaps Bangkok is disconcerting, but it is certainly not boring.