The Thailand Creative and Design Center (TCDC) opened in Bangkok’s Emporium
Centre in November 2005. This enterprising organisation aims to let the
world know that Thailand wants to compete in the contemporary world of
design. There is a large library that, during the January weekend that I was
there, was full of youth (who apparently would otherwise have been shopping)
sitting and reading.
I had been asked to give a talk about the connection of the film Notting Hill
with the Travel Bookshop. The movie played on all screens throughout the
weekend and my concern was that the audience – a full house – would be
expecting Hugh Grant or Julia Roberts to appear.
However the title of my talk – Turn Passion into Reality –
seemed to satisfy the movie’s aficionados. I talked about how and why I
started the Travel Bookshop in 1979 – how it was (and still is) my belief
that you can get more out of the country you are travelling to, if you read
literature, including fiction, which is set there; how Richard Curtis, then
a neighbour, had come into the bookshop in the late 90s saying he was thinking
of writing a film set in a bookshop and how that film became the immensely
successful Notting Hill. A second talk was about my recent travels
and how I have connected them with literature.
Bangkok from London just for the weekend was a mad venture and I certainly
didn’t get the feeling that S.J. Perelman had in Westward Ha!
“it struck me as the most soothing metropolis I had thus far seen in the
East”. Arriving after a 12 hour flight at 6.30 am I was given less than an
hour’s rest before being interviewed by 11 different papers and magazines. I
was tired.
However adrenalin just about kept me going and I was taken to a party at Jim
Thompson’s house for the opening of Siam in Trade and War. The accompanying
book illustrating these fascinating 19th century maps, recently discovered
in the Royal Palace, is published by River Books.
Jim Thompson who was largely responsible for setting up the Thai silk industry
disappeared mysteriously in the Cameron Highlands in Malaysia in 1967: “The
dense jungle rolls away endlessly on all sides, green and silent, roadless
and dangerous: there are tigers in it, and hidden ravines a hundred feet
deep, and tribes of elusive aborigines who still hunt with blowguns and
poisoned darts along the secret trails” (William Warren Jim
Thompson: The Legendary American of Thailand).
In his book A Fortune Teller Told Me, Tiziano Terzani visited Bangkok
in 1993, the year the fortune teller told him he should not fly. He
contrasts the “vulgar modernity of Bangkok, dirty, chaotic, stinking where
the water is polluted and the air lead-poisoned” with old Bangkok where “The
few streets on terra firma were lined with tall trees whose branches made
tunnels of cool shade over the little traffic there was. The gilded spires
of the pagodas soared above the houses and the palaces …”
At one point we picked up a taxi to go in the opposite direction (luckily) of
the Chinese New Year rush-hour traffic. The driver told us he hadn’t moved
for almost an hour; fortunately the Sky Train has made an enormous
difference to the chronic traffic problems of Bangkok. I was staying close
to the stop Ari where “We nose into narrow streets: cook-stalls and cloth
shops, fruit-vendors and flower sellers, people packed tight on the
sidewalks and seemingly packed down from above by the tangle of signboards
and cable, and the heavy black haze of monoxide hanging over them (Charles
Nicholl Borderlines). Nearby there was an excellent Thai
restaurant, Deva at Soi Ari 3, where we ate crispy duck salad, Thai style
crab cakes and fluffy fish.
Wherever I go I am always fascinated by bookshops. There is an enormous and
brand new branch of Kinokuniya on the 3rd floor of the Siam Paragon (where
many of the retail outlets are yet to open). It has a whole section devoted
to Sudoku. Much more appealing is Orchid Books on the 4th floor of Silom
Plaza which sells books about Buddhism and Asian Art as well as being a
specialist publisher. The shopping centres are ubiquitous – but I’m not sure
I can agree with Ian Buruma in God’s Dust that “After the air of slow death
of Rangoon, I felt like kissing the ground of the newest Bangkok shopping
mall. Here the king plays jazz”.
On the Rangsit Campus of Bangkok University there is a delightful and
seemingly little known ceramics museum – the Southeast Asian Ceramics
Museum. It is full of rare and wonderful pots and bowls – including much
shipwreck stuff. Many are in pristine condition - not in pieces such as
Yukio Mishima describes in The Temple of the Dawn: “As he approached,
he realized that the pagoda was all inlaid with countless fragments of
Chinese porcelain of either red or blue glaze … With the first rays of dawn
over the Menam River, the tens of thousands of porcelain fragments turned
into so many tiny mirrors that captured the light. A great structure of
mother-of-pearl sparkling riotously”.
Pico Iyer summed up my feelings well – my unease due to a nervousness about
public speaking: “And for all my unease in Bangkok, I could not deny that it
was quite the most invigorating, and accommodating, city I had ever seen –
more lazily seductive than even Rio or Havana. For elegance here was
seasoned with funkiness, and efficiency was set off by mystery. Sugar was
blended with spice” (Video Night in Kathmandu).
