The Shock of Bangkok

I was only there for four days but from my lofty tourist perch Singapore is everything that almost all other cities in Asia are not. The tap water is fit to drink, drivers stop for pedestrians, the streets are litter free, and English can be understood most everywhere. The people look confident and dress the part. Bangkok has none of these positive virtues. Thailand is a big country with a Buddhist north and a Muslim south and poor people everywhere who are drawn to their nation’s capital and the result is the chaos of car exhaust, crumbling concrete and beggars with every malady imaginable on display behind their begging bowls and filthy dogs and children.

Everything in many Asian cities looks new and old all at the same time. A new shopping development or freeway overpass may have crumbling concrete or exposed rusty rebar. Buildings get stained by car exhaust and rain. It took time, attention to detail, dedication and money to make Singapore look and functions as well as it does. Cities like Bangkok have more pressing needs. For one thing, Bangkok is succeeds in delivering some basic services to its citizens. OK, the water out of the tap isn't fit for human consumption but the Bangkok Skytrain and MTS subway are much better than their counterparts (well, there is no subway) in Kuala Lumpur. They go where people seem to want to go and connect with each other.

Bangkok seems to have been built without electricity and communication by wire in mind so it's been retrofitted on the fly and on the cheap in the most ugly and utilitarian of ways. The wires run amok like someone tripped and dropped a bowl of ramen. I've also seen this in China where wires are tacked up just about anywhere they'll fit. A city does what it can with what it's got. And then there's Bangkok's infamous traffic. The Skytrain and underground rail has helped but it's still the chaos of pedestrian beware. There are plenty of cops out on the street wearing sunglasses and surgical masks but they just nudge things along.  

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Getting lost in Nanjing

Maybe my age is catching up with me. My dogs are barking. My feet hurt. I'm no stranger to walking in a big city but population wise Nanjing is 10 times the size of little Seattle and I can't read most of the signs. Oh sure, there are some signs in Roman letters but Nanjing's traffic department seems to use them sparingly. I spent today lost and hurting. This city is noisy. Driver honk their horns at everything that moves, including other vehicles. Lots of people here have scooters and they drive them wherever they wish. Sidewalk driving? No problem! The scooters also have burglar alarms. People park their scooters on the sidewalk with hundreds of other scooters. When one gets touched or a loud truck passes by all of their alarms go off together like a hospital nursery full of crying, screaming infants. There's construction everywhere; buildings, stores, a new subway line is going in a few blocks from my hotel and Chinese construction sites run two, maybe three shifts a day. It's loud, I'm lost. My feet are shouting, get the fsck off of us. NOW.

I set out this morning for the Memorial to the Victims of the Nanjing Massacre. One of my tour books had it written in Chinese but every time I showed it to a cab driver they shook their head and rattled something off that I didn't understand. I think it's closed for renovations. I really wanted to see it, in 1937 the Japanese Imperial Army took time out from their busy schedule of conquering most of Asia to make a special example of the City of Nanjing. In a few weeks of true Nazi league genocide 300,000 Nanjing locals were killed in mass murders, head chopping contests, mutilations. Countless women were gang raped by Japanese soldiers or pressed into sexual slavery in the service of the Japanese Imperial Army. Brutality and war go hand in hand but the Japanese went above and beyond in visiting suffering and misery on their conquered subjects here.

I tried walking to the memorial but my feet made me turn back. I went looking for a restaurant district instead, I couldn't find that either. So I came back to the hotel and had a bright idea. I called up a few web pages of places I wanted to see, pages with both Chinese and English. I took my laptop down to the front desk, showed the clerks the pages while I said "taxi" and few times and pantomimed writing. I think it worked, I'm about to go out into the loud night to find out.