Tale of Two Cities

I have been in Bangkok two times now, for a total duration of about twelve days. Up to yesterday, it was indeed a cesspool of a SE Asian city. In many ways, that's its allure. However, I took a trip down to Embassy lane on Tuesday and reaffirmed what I have seen in many a city. It is not only the dichotomy of rich and poor but the experience you will take away from your visit. Most of us out here are traveling under the guidance of the Lonely Planet guidebooks. They proffer cheap accommodations, tasty eats and transportation tips. Their most useful features are the history of certain monuments and the known scams you will encounter in each place. The downside of these books is that they put travelers squarely into what we have affectionately dubbed "the tourist ghetto." When an influx of naive foreigners with thick wallets are all congregated together by the lure of cheap guesthouses...clearly trouble will result. The bus service booked through the guesthouse traps you 40 minutes out of town at their sisters restaurants. The tuk-tuk drivers are all in cahoots at price-fixing around the ghetto so you have walk 10 minutes to get a fair deal or a fare taxi. Fortune tellers, crappy-goods hawkers, prostitutes, street beggars, and grubby children run rampant. And you get the feeling that all anyone wants is your money.

If you were however to come into the city on business. You had to meet a foreign consulate, or simply booked ahead into a deluxe hotel name you recognized from home...you would have quite a different experience. I recommend anyone to visit their national embassy in every major city. I'm guessing if it's a western country, they have some pretty nice real estate. I went to the US Embassy to get some more pages sewn into my passport. (Yes, I'm secretly proud that I ran out of pages) Over there is a whole "other Bangkok." People in suits, clean streets, no beggars, luxury buildings, designer stores and beautiful overhead walkways to get people off the smelly streets. It could have been a modern Los Angeles. The feel was totally different. I have to admit that I liked it better. Who doesn't like nice things? I am just glad that I finally got to experience both sides of Bangkok. It mirrored exactly what I've seen in Jakarta, Manila, Saigon, and to a lesser extent Singapore. The experience you take away is all in where you look.