Daily in Asia

Little Bangkok

Day 1.

Bangkok is one of the biggest, noisiest and dirtiest of cities on the planet. It's inconvenient, annoying and hot. It is also undoubtedly one of the most charming and exciting. Each time I come here I get to see another side of life lead by the fun-loving, friendly Khon Krungthep. More often than not, despite their obvious political and economic difficulties of the oppressed or the very poor, I come away thinking theirs is generally a fairly good life and that they all have a good time of it. Maybe this says more about the fact that I'm just happy to be here, that I don't have to drive in this place and why so many other Farangs (people of European ancestry) decide this is the right place to relocate. La-la-la...

Most modern hotels in Bangkok, like modern airports and modern shopping malls throughout the world, are so boringly predictable and so unutterably dull and formulaic that the only way one can deduce if one has awoken in London, Dubai or Rio is from the pictures on the wall. Their only virtues are that their cleanliness is close to sterility.

The Baan Chantra Hotel, however, is not modern -writes he using one of the hotel's guest-only iMacs. It is a very modest venture situated on the busy Samsen Road (isn't every road in Bangkok busy?) in Dusit near the Old City. Quite simply, it is a charm: an old family house with creaky teak floorboards and where the owners have linked past and present, traveller's amenities with traditional Thai values –we feel like honoured guests!

So, before we have even taken one step outside we already know we were in the beautiful city of Little Bangkok, the city where the hard-working Khon Krungthep exude a genuine, smiley warmth and hospitality, where the tinny kitchen radio plays Simon Bates "Our Tune" (the theme from Zeffirelli's Romeo & Juliet, by the way) and where the green curry Thai breakfast may be as spicy as a spicy green curry can be! The city growls into life, but here is Little Bangkok -the intimate, soft underbelly.

Modesty is, of course, beguiling and despite being surrounded by the ubiquitous tin-roofed homes that characterise much of this City of Angels (see this Youtube on pronouncing the full ceremonial name –most just use Bangkok or Krung Thep), the owners of the Baan Chantra have done a wonderful job of staying in touch with the reality of this city's crazy life by being supremely self-assured and calm. Oh, I don't know -blame Buddhism or something...

It feels like we've been put up in someone's home (it's an official no-smoking hotel, cor-blimey!)  and the lovely owner even got up at half-past midnight to welcome us personally -bless. One of the loveliest features are the dated, sepia photos on the stairway that show proud family moments now all gone. All-told, staying here's not a bad start.

Things Done to Towels

Day 6.

Once in the Land of Thighs it is possible to see that many of the more obvious things on public display have deeper significances. The ubiquitous presence of His Divine Majesty King Bhumibol Adulyade in posters and beautifully framed pictures, for example, is not merely a reminder of who's in charge, matey, but is a link with the wider shared Tai heritage, a confirmation of Buddhisty philosophical values in a Thai version of the doctrine of Manifest Destiny, and a current and potent adherent political statement all wrapped up in one. It seems that one of the worst insults round these parts is to question a chap's patriotism and love for all things regal.

Another symbolic Thai reference with philosophical depth that is perhaps identified more obviously by most visitors, is the religious iconography. Buddha images are everywhere; for worship and for the obtaining of merit, for teaching and reinforcing of central cosmological ideas within the Thai mind, and to justify social harmony within a clearly inequitous society. That religious symbolic art is so pervasive is symptomatic of its philosophical adoption. That mythical Garuda half-man-half-birds and Singha lions appear everywhere signifies that these creatures are ever-present links to that greater, more mystical reality - the one that transcends the here and now, the mediocre ups and downs of life, the mundane self-doubting of the individual and the vulgar vagaries of politics and society.

It is also symptomatic of the plain fact that there has not, of course, been a complete reformation of Thai religious thought along the lines of that experienced in Europe in the 16th century and after. This aspect of Thai life and thought has continued through wars, famines, revolutionary sea-changes of Governments, kings and prime ministers. There also appears to have been sufficient freedom of thought for most individuals to fully express themselves in their own style without being coerced into adopting tenets of faith with one fearful eye on the rack or the flames: it's your business.

Which naturally brings me to towels. I've seen some astonishing towelic creations over my years in this place of keenly-adopted iconography and religious philosophy. I'm beginning to think there is something deeper to this towel origami than meets the casual western eye, but no-one has explained this ancient eastern art to me. Please offer your in-depth suggestions into the secret language of meta-towelling.