Five Reasons You Should Definitely Visit Bangkok – and Five Reasons You Shouldn’t

Your taste buds will literally explode inside your head. So long, sense of taste. It was worth it.

The Sights – As the capital, Bangkok unsurprisingly has many of Thailand’s top sights. For sure, there are tons of things to see in other parts of the country (my favorites: mist-shrouded tea plantations in Doi Mae Salong and the awesome ancient ruins in Sukhothai) but as with the food, Bangkok has a pretty dense collection of world-class cultural artifacts and most are just a short tuk-tuk ride away. It’s easy for us long-term expats to get jaded (“The Reclining Buddha again??”) but it’s easy to forget just how awe-inspiring they are for first time visitors.

The Nightlife: Be it a superbly mixed cocktail with a cigar and a killer view, a spur-of-the-moment shopping excursion to a night market, a family-friendly cruise up the River of Kings, or an evening with the boys that would make even the most jaded North American stripper blush, there is literally something for everyone here. After-hours clubs, all night street-dining, swanky men’s lounges… nowhere else in Thailand can match the variety and momentum that Bangkok offers after the sun goes down.

And to prove that Bangkok has some sweet nightlife? This was taken at a funeral.

Western Conveniences: While most of us who live here long-term are pretty okay with never having to shop at a strip mall, watch American Idol, or chow down at Applebees, I’m sure that many would admit that it’s sometimes nice to spoil ourselves with a little something we miss from back home. Be it a lazy Saturday with a latte and a newspaper at a Starbucks, high-speed(ish) internet, English-language bookstores with huge selections, sit-down toilets, or the availability of Pop Tarts or Marmite, it’s good to have the choice to splurge. If you’re in the boonies… well, good luck with that.

Starbucks, you vicious, evil, overpriced bitch, how I love you.

The People: Bangkok is truly a cultural and societal crossroads, with people from every class, race, ethnicity, religion, hairstyle, smell, tax bracket and skin tone represented by at least a few random peeps. The range of stories and backgrounds you learn about is astonishing and simply something that you won’t see as often outside the big, bad city. Favorite people I’ve met: a Flamenco dance champion who dropped acid with Led Zeppelin; a Vietnam vet who lived in a tent in the Cambodian jungle for several years; and a guy from Sierra Leone who escaped a civil war by floating down a river on a raft made with plastic bottles. The more people you meet, the crazier the stories become and the more you realize just how sheltered your life has been.

The Should Not Column:

And now the reasons why you should definitely do your best to completely avoid Bangkok.

The Traffic: If the first thing you think about when you hear ‘Bangkok’ isn’t ‘sex’, it’s likely ‘traffic jams’, and rightly so. With rush hour traffic cruising along at an average speed of 1.6km per hour, it can be infuriating to try and get anywhere in the city. Granted, the more you know about the transportation system as a whole, the easier it is to get around, but if you have to drive, it can be a nightmare. What makes it worse is the unpredictable nature of the traffic flow; sometimes a trip to your friend’s place will take 15 minutes, other times it will take an hour for seemingly no reason. It’s a constant headache and it’s only getting worse.

“Hi, Toyota? Yeah, I’d like to return my car.” Photo by Jodi Cobb.

The Noise: Also closely tied to traffic, noise in Bangkok is simply out of control. I guess I’m used to it by now, as I only really notice it when it reaches extreme levels, but most Thais don’t seem to notice at all. Screaming crotch-rocket motorbikes, rumbling busses, and obnoxiously loud sales presentations with vapid, yapping sales girls all serve to make walking anywhere crowded an often painful experience. When the BTS installed TVs to force people to watch idiotic commercials, many people said the last bastion of peace in Thailand was gone. The subway doesn’t have TVs (yet) but it’s so loud anyway it likely wouldn’t matter. About the only place you can go that isn’t a cacophony of aural pain is a library – of which Bangkok has precious few.

The Pollution: Closely tied to traffic, pollution is a constant pain in the ass here. If it’s not in the air, it’s behind every billboard – plastic bags given out by the dozen by every convenience store in the city collect in piles and random scraps of detritus dot every vacant lot. I cringe when I see a street vendor pour a greasy bucket of black soup into the drain because I know it’s going directly to the river – which I live right next to, by the way, thanks for that. Multiply that by 20,000 times per day and it’s no wonder pockets of rancid air float around the city like ghosts in a Super Mario game. Breathing Bangkok’s soupy air after coming from an island or the lush northern jungles can be a bit of a shock.

Scariest part? The engine isn’t even running.

The Prices: I can’t tell you how many times I’ve gotten an email from a friend or a friend of a friend asking if they know a good hotel for around $10 a night. I always tell them that I know of a hotel for that price, but ‘good’ wouldn’t be the word I’d use. Fact is, Thailand overall is cheap – Bangkok not so much. Sure, as a general rule you can live relatively cheaply if you know your way around and are willing to forego certain luxuries, but if you want to maintain the same status and lifestyle you had back home, forget it. Dinner in a nice restaurant and drinks with friends will still set you back $50-$75, and good luck finding a decent hotel for less than $30 a night. Prices in smaller towns and cities are much lower, of course, but Bangkok has a way of costing much more than you expect. It’s much cheaper than, say, Paris or Tokyo, but the days of crashing on Khao San for $5 are over.

The People: The yin and yang of Bangkok is its people, so much so that they get a spot on both ends of my list. While many of Bangkok’s residents are cool like Fonzie, many more of them are utter whackjobs who skidded out of life long ago and have spent the last decade drinking themselves to death and paying girls to lick their wounds. There are many types: the skeezy sexpats, the Eurotrash douchebags, the hi-society wannabes who reek of desperation, the 20-year old jackoffs jamming 6 months of drinking into one week of holidays…the list goes on. Bangkok seems to catch these fruitcakes like a whales’ baleen filter catches krill and you’ll likely run into several while here. Actually, in this regard, Bangkok takes second place; for a real freakshow, head to Pattaya.

A regular Wednesday morning on Khao San Road. Photo by Flickr user Maciej Dakowicz.

Final word: Hey, life’s full of crappy stuff, but whaddya want, 100% awesome 100% of the time? Of course you should visit Bangkok, the bad is far outweighed by the good. Just be ready for it. See you here!