Travellers arriving in Bangkok for a business trip or holiday are greeted by a large city of over ten million people, with huge high rise hotels, office buildings and condominiums. Multi-million dollar shopping malls are spread all over the city. City roads are overcrowded with vehicles, and often gridlocked. The red lights districts have one of the worst reputations for seediness in the entire world. Young elephants, miserable and unhappy, are used as beggars and paraded around the streets for the amusement of tourists. The roads are madness, the pollution awful, the heat overbearing, and the excessive humidity ever present. As a result of the largely uncontrolled development that has been been allowed to happen over the last twenty years, allied to the increasing levels of pollution, temperatures in the city have gradually increased year on year. In the hottest part of the year, between April and June, temperatures often reach an unbearable 40 degrees Celsius.
So what happened to the Bangkok of Somerset Maugham and Noel Coward? What happened to the city that was once known as “The Venice of the East”? The Thai government allowed unabated development, without much thought to the effect this would have. Planning controls were virtually unknown. Developers with fat enough wallets could do what they liked, wherever they liked.
So, was Bangkok such a wonderful place 30, 40 or 50 years ago? The answer is yes, a very different and very much better place to live. I speak from personal experience of the 1960s. What was different? Well, for a start, the population was less than 60% of present numbers. The mass migration from rural areas had not begun. The number of high rise buildings could be counted on the fingers of one hand, with buildings rarely higher than five or six stories. The roads were crowded at times, but nothing like present levels. It was possible to drive to central Bangkok from the residential suburbs in a reasonable time. Pollution was not so bad, other than buses and taxis who belched out foul black smoke. Temperatures were lower than now, making it quite possible to walk around the city in relative comfort. It is almost impossible to do that now. There was a red light district, yes, but very low key, and almost respectable compared to the undiluted flesh-for-sale areas now infamous the world over.
There were problems living in Thailand in the 1960s. Every August or September, large parts of Bangkok were under water, as flood water came down from the Central and Northern regions. Year after year, this event re-occurred, with no effective flood defenses. Fortunately, this problem has now largely been eradicated, but it took more than four decades to fix the problem.
Some things have never changed and probably never will. The political chaos, the venality of politicians, and the wholesale corruption. On the positive side, the happy, adaptable, smiling, endlessly optimistic Thai people manage to rise above any set back.
So, on balance, was living in Bangkok in the 1960s preferable to now. Definitely. Quieter, less crowded, cleaner, cooler and just a better place to live now. Well, that’s progress for you.