Arriving in Bangkok

What you most notice on the taxi drive in from Bangkok airport is how non-descript the city is. The clogged motorway is littered with massive billboards hawking Laz-Y Boy recliners, Heineken beer, Samsung televisions, and Bridgestone tires (“Your Journey, Our Passion”). This could be Los Angeles or Frankfurt or even Tokyo.

The empty rusted warehouse remind one of Havana, post-Russia, and the brilliant cartoonish graffiti covering the walls invokes downtown Los Angeles. After a 30-minute drive you pull up to a stylish but androgynous hotel that might just as easily be in Istanbul or Berlin where in the lobby is a chocolate shop (“Open daily until 8″) that reminds one of Paris or Florence. Where is the Thai in Thailand, you wonder? Where is the Bang in Bangkok?