Co-opted at last!

Bangkok is bright and noisy and slightly disorienting. I found myself a place to stay far from the festy sink of backpacker inquity that is Khao San Road, a cheap room with hot water and functional electricity and a bookshelf and a coffee percolator but it took more than clean hair and a caffeine injection to adjust to Bangkok. I thought it might be possible to eat myself into a state of post-Myanmar re-adjustment. This tactic wasn’t entirely successful for some reason. Too much choice, that ol’ thing. I read a couple of Agatha Christie and P.D. James novels to steady my nerves and reassure myself that the world always makes sense, that the killer is always found, that order is always restored.

Still, Bangkok was confusing me. I needed a context for the bright pink taxis, a bridge from the 50c street noodles to the Nike-iPod collaborations in the malls, from the monks and wats to the neon and concrete and these could not be provided by genteel British crime novelists. What I needed, obviously, was a mainline dose of pop culture. I watched some Z-Grade movies on cable to see if this would help. Alas, American Pie 2 (true) and The Perfect Catch did not bring back my mojo. The BBC World theme music was beginning to feel like a drill in my skull. I needed to do more than merely listen and look. No, my friends, what I needed to come to terms with Bangkok was a fully embodied radical pop-culture experience: the multiplex!! I voluntarily underwent complete sensory distortion therapy and saw 28 Weeks Later at the top of a shopping centre: aircon so intense that you’re provided with blankets in the cinema (OK, I went for the supercheap VIP seats), amazing surround sound from all directions, lights, lights, lights, simulated odours of delight wafting everywhere: and it worked! The best photo sticker machines ever, a lurid disco bowling alley, a hugely serious, seriously huge gaming arcade, comic shops, crazy camp hostesesses at pizza shops, gadgetry ahoy, don and ramen bars in fluorescent boxes, weird Olde Americana themed pretzel bars,previews for a Thai language martial arts screwball comedy (Jackie Chan meets the Farrelly brothers in a ladyboy bar), standing up to pay respects to the king before a film about a rage virus, familial disloyalty and the end of civilisation… It might have been a hallucination as there were no photos allowed but suddenly, Bangkok is happening!, the Asian megalopolis makes sense, and I want to go to Tokyo!