The English writer James Kirkup liked Bangkok’s desultory confusion and dishevelment. Though grounded in his native Durham he would have preferred “to live in the East, where I am at home with my sense of disorder.”

There are colourful Hindu shrines in Bangkok, garuda on royal temples, and Brahmin priests preside over royal ceremonies but the great majority of Thais are adherents of Theravada Buddhism. The “imagined unity of the nation” promotes the myth that most of the 60 million people are ethnically Thai but over 100 other ethnicities co-exist. The reigning monarch King Rama IX is the focus of state ceremonial and the promoter of orthodox Buddhism. Royal capital and realm are yoked under the official motto: “Nation, Religion, and King”. Three distinct marks of Thai national identity are their pride in their independence (they were not colonized), their powers of assimilation, and the high degree of tolerance for pluralistic life-styles within the mixed ethnic pot of their society.



But tolerance has some limits, as Thai statesman-author Kukrit Pramoj wittily advised a gathering of foreigners in the ‘60s.

There are certain institutions which a Thai respects…They are his religion, which is mostly Buddhist, his king and his parents.  If you say to a Thai that his politicians are rotten he will kiss you on both cheeks. If you tell him that he is a crook, he will deny it with great good humor and will not take offense. If you call his wife a bitch he will agree with you completely and ask you to have a drink to that. But as for those three institutions which I have already mentioned, I would advise you to leave well enough alone…since according to police statistics, the percentage of premeditated murders in this country is low; most murders are committed in sudden passion.

Victims of nocturnal accidents and violence are under special surveillance by rival groups dubbed “Bangkok’s body-snatchers” by the western media, employed by old Chinese benevolent associations, who do brisk business making runs to hospital morgues. Bangkok’s bars officially close at 2 a.m. but the anything goes nightlife continues in private clubs and hotel rooms.

Today over 11 million people live in the sprawling, densely populated capital that has been named the World’s Hottest City by the World Meteorological Organization. Although it is the prime city of Thailand, there is no single commercial centre, no historic downtown per se, and the ad hoc urban planning and cryptic zoning have resulted in an unfocused, fragmented city layout that can be utterly bewildering. In diametric contrast to an orderly, well-planned Southeast Asian metropolis such as Singapore, the capital is post-modern by default, an agglomeration that has many commercial and entertainment centres. Alistair Shearer dubbed Bangkok Americasia – “a hybrid of East and West, the twentieth century come up for air from the ancient swamp of Asia.”

Bangkok developed from paddy fields to villages, from small vernacular dwellings to high rise condominiums, from a trading post to the most prosperous city in the country. Although it is decidedly more western today, a rich artistic and cultural heritage exists within the collection of villages that constitute the city. Fragments of extraordinary beauty and sensation abound. Pockets of traditional indigenous life percolate under a cover of modernity. While the “nests of an aquatic race” that Joseph Conrad spotted in 1888 are long gone, the aquatic past flows through the life of the city.