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When it comes to such modernity (in a destination that we wish to find venerable, ancient and spiritual) the Lonely Planet guide to Bangkok does better than most with a section (three quarters of a page no less) on modern architecture. For all this the guide doesn't really want to know; true a flyover is but a flyover and my enthusiasm may be excessive; but Bangkok is astonishing in the sheer profusion and exuberance of its new building. From the layman's point of view, that is. Minimalists and hi-tech theoreticians from Europe or the States might well think that the new Thai architecture derives from the worst and most gimcrack of eighties Post Modern. But I prefer something vulgar and sincere to something tasteful and ironic. To hell with irony and pastiche; out here you feel that Post Modern, while perhaps not absolutely the hippest thing, is at least done for brazen effect rather than the interests of "wit". The Thais like marble-look balustrades right up to the fiftieth floor and a cheeky pergola to boot to top it out at 400 feet, and good luck to them. Lots of glass, lots of mirrors; there is a tower the shape of a Transformer Robot in Sathon Thai Road. A dinghy lost in a sunlit sea, a maintainance cradle dangles high against the flank of dazzling glass, two little heads, the mariners inside. Another mirror-clad tower reflects the clouds; they swim serenely across its flank, the whole building like a vast and restful screen saver.

Today after a torrid walk through the thick of the city, as a respite from the fumes, the heat, the dust, the glitter I was tempted into a cinema. I liked the look of the poster: Kung-Fu babes, dark glasses, swanky cars. I bought my ticket from a sweet woman in a little glass box where she sat fiddling with a
bunch of coloured drinking straws. By the drapes leading into the auditorium stand two ushers, like Tweedledum and Tweedledee, in red jackets, bow ties, each with a Chinese Flying Eagle chromium torch protruding from their breast pocket. I am ushered to a seat (not difficult because I am the only member of the audience) and then sit in the dark for twenty minutes: no film. No film because the projectionist hasn't turned up from his lunch. The lady in the booth smiles sweetly, giggles at the little packet of washing powder I happen to be carrying and shows me the intricate flower she has built from her drinking straws.

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