Bangkok

A city is a whole composed of many things: a whole of memory, a whole of desire, a whole of the signs of a language… A city is like a sponge, soaking up these ceaselessly flowing tides of memory, and expanding as it does. — Invisible Cities (Italo Calvino)

This Mid-Autumn Festival, my fourth time in Bangkok.

Still the streets are full of sawasdee, the whole city restless and alluring.

The first three times I travelled alone, letting the horse wander as it pleased. This time, I came prepared, with a clear purpose.

My travelling companion said Bangkok gave him this feeling: too mixed, and feminine within the mixture.

That is exactly so.

But Bangkok’s mixture is not the mixture of tolerance; it is the mixture of a city that has been conquered.

Of course I still love this city — it has the look of the old world, and the abandon of a new morality.

Yet on the smiling faces of the Bangkok people, I cannot see a trace of the prosperous age I imagined should be there. Why is that?