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In Thailand, there is life beyond the capital
In an over-centralized country, not all roads should lead to Bangkok


A garden with a green wall tucked into forested hills some 80 kilometers southeast of Bangkok. (Photo by Dominic Faulder)
DOMINIC FAULDERNovember 23, 2022 11:00 JST

When I unexpectedly got stuck in Bangkok during the failed April Fool's Day coup of 1981, it was still the only real city in Thailand -- a kingdom of villages. Chiang Mai, the "rose of the north," ranked second, but was really no more than a large, sleepy provincial town.

In Thai, the capital has the world's longest place name, according to Guinness World Records, beginning Krung Thep Maha Nakhon. It was not just the seat of government, but the nation's industrial and business hub and main port. Oil refineries were close to the port, and refined petrochemicals were transported upcountry by rail -- a disruptive feature of this fascinating but dysfunctional city of some 15 million that continues to this day.

The Thai capital, a tawdry "Venice of the East," had its charms but was essentially a sleepy backwater afflicted by a plague of heat-absorbing concrete shophouses, and virtually bereft of libraries and bookshops. The American travel writer Paul Theroux, visiting at the end of the Vietnam War in 1975, described it unkindly as a "flattened anthill."

That has changed. Bangkok has become rich and sophisticated, and has been spared permanent gridlock by the most spectacular and ingenious mass transit infrastructure in Southeast Asia. But the city remains frenetic and dysfunctional. Some middle-class families virtually live in their cars doing school runs.

About 10 years ago, my wife and I decided to quit the city for forested hills some 80 kilometers along the Gulf of Thailand. With no buildings in sight, the main view across our field is a small, wooded hill that is home to hundreds of exceptionally promiscuous macaques. In the drier periods of the year, the monkeys descend in tribes upon our village and shred unguarded plastic rubbish bags.




Top: Bangkok is famous for some of the longest traffic lights in the world. Bottom: Much quieter scenes can be found surprisingly close to the capital. (Photos by Dominic Faulder)

There are snakes of every kind in the undergrowth, including cobras. One night I returned late to find a 3-meter reticulated python draped along the front gate. It eyeballed me through the windscreen for 15 minutes before doubling back on itself and departing noiselessly along the garden wall.

But this life is not really as "jungly" as it sounds. Anyone who has lived in Bangkok will have tales of pythons in the laundry and various lizards in the cupboards. Our home sits in the heart of Chonburi province and is connected to Bangkok by two motorways built to service the Eastern Seaboard, Thailand's industrial heartland. That was developed in the 1980s to drag the economy beyond commodities and tourism, and is integral to what has long been the largest conurbation in Southeast Asia.


Larger visitors to the garden sometimes need to be taken in hand. (Photo by Dominic Faulder)

Chonburi is a full employment province, and home to Laem Chabang, the country's biggest port, with refineries close by. Further down the coast in Rayong province, there is further industrialization at Map Ta Phut. This whole stretch is the gateway to the Eastern Economic Corridor, essentially a 21st-century version of the Eastern Seaboard.

Some foreign missionaries and artists used to reside upcountry. A few intrepid souls enrobed in remote monasteries, and there is a dwindling residue of U.S. Vietnam War veterans who married locally and never went home.

But the number of foreigners living outside Bangkok used to be minuscule before Thailand started to appear in global lists of the best countries in the world to consider for retirement, before its highway capacity doubled in the 1990s, before its health care system improved exponentially, and before the retail revolution of the 1990s started wiping out obsolescent mom and pop stores with breathtaking ranges of local and imported produce.




Top: One never need feel lonely in the Thai countryside. Bottom: Mowing the lawn takes on a whole new meaning. (Photos by Dominic Faulder)

Today, I can get to central Bangkok in under 90 minutes when necessary, and to the main airport in just half that time. My regular trips into the business district are quicker than those for many Bangkok residents. A high-speed rail link is under construction down the Eastern Seaboard that will bind together all the main population centers, ports and airports.

So life in Thailand's supposed boondocks is in many respects far more livable and efficient than in choked Bangkok with its questionable air quality. Country living should be promoted, but successive Thai governments, mired in essentially 19th-century thinking, continue to see decentralization as a threat, and deny all but one of the country's 77 provinces (Bangkok) the right to elect their own governors.

As long as all roads lead to Bangkok, so will the kingdom's problems.

Dominic Faulder is a Nikkei Asia associate editor.

yong wrote: ↑Wed Nov 23, 2022 1:20 pm So life in Thailand's supposed boondocks is in many respects far more livable and efficient than in choked Bangkok with its questionable air quality. Country living should be promoted, but successive Thai governments, mired in essentially 19th-century thinking, continue to see decentralization as a threat, and deny all but one of the country's 77 provinces (Bangkok) the right to elect their own governors.

As long as all roads lead to Bangkok, so will the kingdom's problems.

[/size]Dominic Faulder is a Nikkei Asia associate editor.

How would you promote country living in the areas around Bangkok? Unless you're next to the beach, it sucks.

Reminds me of an old joke:

'If another country invaded Thailand, the Thai army might not stop them but the Bangkok traffic would..'