We Have seen the Future ... and it's Crowded

We got into Bangkok on Friday night. Sixty one year old bodies are not meant for thirty eight hour trips (which, in this case, included a 25 hour night). We managed a short walk around the area of the hotel, ate canapés at the hotel (included as part of a happy hour deal which includes all the booze we can drink in two hours) and went to sleep.
Got up bright and early Saturday morning, ready to start sightseeing. We have with us, in addition to a hard copy of Fodor’s Thailand and an e-version of The Lonely Planet Thailand for the Kindle a little LP guide to Bangkok (thank you Jerry) that lists, in order, fifteen highlights of a trip to Bangkok. Highlight number six is the Chatuchak weekend market. Since it is open, at least fully open only on Saturday, we headed there first. It is at the very end of the Skytrain line (basically an above ground version of the IRT) and massive—but not fundamentally different from other third world markets we’ve seen. We spent a couple of hours there, got back on the Skytrain and headed to one of the downtowns. We got off at the Siam Paragon Mall, walked through Siam Square, in effect an outdoor mall, and into the Mah Boon Krong Mall (number 11 on the LP list of highlights). MBK was pretty amazing—seven stories, hundreds of stalls on each floor, each floor packed with people pretty much shoulder to shoulder, a lot of junk for sale, but a lot of it, But MBK, according to LP Bangkok’s busiest mall, was nowhere nearly as impressive as Siam Paragon, an upscale mall. By the Gerstel Scale of mall quality (average quality of goods times number of stores), this was the fanciest mall either of us had ever seen. It did not include an amusement park, as I gather the Edmonton mall does—but there was an amusement park right outside and various clowns and other kid activities (Siam Paragon Fantasyland, I think they called). But, as fancy as the mall was, the food court—more like a food palace—was well beyond anything either of us had ever seen. First, it was huge, covering the entire bottom floor of the mall and roughly the size of an entire floor of the Holyoke Mall. We entered through something that called itself a food court, several stations each offering different type of food, very roughly an Asian version of a Las Vegas buffet. Beyond the food court, however, were more food stands, maybe 50, maybe 100—dim sum, smoothies, desserts, sushi, fruits. Whether the food was meant to eat in the mall or take home, we could not tell. Then, beyond the food stands were restaurants, maybe 50, more likely 100. McDonalds was there. So was Burger King and KFC and Starbucks. But so was a sushi house and an upscale Japanese Steak house and a Japanese knock off of an American burger joint and Indian food and Moslem food and Indian food and Indonesian food and a couple of Chinese restaurants, a few French bistros, the mandatory range of Italian food and, of course, various Thai restaurants. AND THEY WERE ALL FULL. OK, maybe I exaggerate a little—of roughly 5,000 seats (50-100 seats per restaurant, 50-100 restaurants) maybe 100 were open. And then, beyond the restaurant was a “gourmet” market (I love the juxtaposition of categories in Aisle 9: I had always suspected that chips went with cuttlefish and was happy to see it confirmed. Where is Eviatar when we need him?) (By the way, the picture of MBK and one of the pictures of Paragon’s food court are from the internet. Since the point about both is there massive size, it would be very hard for any picture to give a good sense. Plus we were too tired by that point to lift the camera.)
So, if it’s the Siam Paragon that was truly astonishing, why is LP listing 3rd worldy Chatuchak and downscale MBK as highlights but skipping over Siam Paragon? I guess they’re allowed their Orientalist fantasies about bazaars (Chtauchak) and quasi-Orientalist fantasies about teeming masses (MBK). But they’re missing the real story. Shoppers’ day in Bangkok isn’t about the past or maybe even the present. It’s about the future. And what the future is about is shopping. There’s something for everyone, which is to say it’s class stratified and age inclusive. But isn’t this what the “Asian Tigers” are all about? If there are going to be millions of Indians and billions of Chinese jamming into malls, Thailand, at the moment significantly wealthier per capita than either, shows us what it will look like. Even if the earth isn’t getting crowded, the malls are. I will search no more for an authentic Thai experience. So far as I can tell, it’s buying stuff.

Next report: Shorter, some pictures of river traffic, the difficulty of getting a sense of how Bangkok is laid out, some pictures of the Royal Palace and a few Wats, plus and answer to the meaning of life.

Oops, forgot: We also went to the Jim Thompson house. Thompson was an American ex-pat who helped revitalize the Thai silk business in the 1950’s and 60’s, apparently to significant personal profit. He was a former OSS agent and possibly a CIA agent as well. He disappeared in Malaysia in 1967. The pictures illustrate cliché number 8—the juxtaposition of the old and the new. Bear in mind that Bangkok is not an old city: It was founded after New York, Boston or, for that matter, Northampton. Although there is some effort to preserve bits of the old, Bangkok seems pretty relentless about modernizing. Cliché number 8 is an updated Orientalist fantasy, at least in the sense that it’s seen as in any sense distinct to the “Orient” but I do not intend to hold myself to higher standards than the LP.