BANGKOK DAYS by Lawrence Osborne
Bangkok Days at Amazon
My Rating: 4, worth getting in paperback.
I'm going to start with my review, and then I will post what Amazon says.
This is a memoir about a man's many visits to Bangkok, Thailand over the span of several years. He even lives there at times. If you are squeamish about sex work and sex workers, or find them morally reprehensible, this is not the book for you.
This book was particularly interesting to me because back in 2002, during the SARS epidemic, my dad took me to Thailand as a birthday present. It was an experience I will never forget. Mr. Osborne's experience was of course, very different than mine, though I walked on many of the same streets that he did, and saw what he did, just not as intimately.
This is the memoir of a dissolute writer who has lost his way. There's a hint to an ex-lover back in the states, but it's only mentioned twice and never dwelt on. He goes to Bangkok originally to get cheap dental work, but then falls in love with the city and can't keep away.
There's a lot of talk of sex, love, perversion, seediness, ghosts, death, addiction, politics, etc. The narrator is no angel. There are hundreds of memoirs along this vein. 'White man goes to foreign country. Fucks a lot of whores. Strokes his ego by writing about how masculine and amazing he is and how different his experiences are', ad nauseum. This memoir is not one of those.
His descriptions of Bangkok are startlingly vivid. It made me wish I had paid more attention to my surroundings when I had been there myself. He touches on the usual subjects, but writes about them with such soul and imagery, you really don't mind. The cast of supporting characters are also very interesting. You might not want to be friends with them yourself, but they are interesting to read about.
At one point he talks about foreign women visiting Bangkok, and how they like it because of the anonymiity it affords them. No one pays attention to them. No one sees them as sexual objects. I agree up to a point. I agree that not a single person hit on me while I was there. There were no cat calls and I wasn't propositioned by anyone. But I was by no means invisible. The 'farang' men treated me like a leper and sometimes outright asked my father what he was doing, bringing me here. It was like I had sullied paradise. My presence ruined it. Only one 'farang' male was nice to me. An African-American karate instructor who gave me his business card at a bar. I wish Mr. Osborne had written a little more about 'farang' women. But I understand this is not a sociology textbook. This is a memoir. A book of his experiences.
All of this being said (sorry about my talking about myself so much, I know that's a big no-no in reviews) this book is definitely worth the read. If you see it in you local bookshop (or want to click on my link), I recommend buying it. I'm not sure if it is out in paperback yet, it is rather new. I liked this book so much that I am about to read another one of his, The Naked Tourist: In Search of Adventure and Beauty in the Age of the Airport Mall
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On to what Amazon has to say:
"From Publishers Weekly
Bangkok is the sponge that absorbs those who have lapsed into dilettantism, writes Osborne (The Accidental Connoisseur) in recounting his time in the fabled city of recreational sex and Buddhism. As he encounters characters questing for sensation and knowledge, he muses on how easy it is for Westerners to remake themselves in the East-much as the 19th-century English schoolteacher Anna Leonowens did when she tutored the royal children of Siam and fashioned herself into a mythologized literary figure. As he discovers in an encounter with a Catholic missionary, it is the ideal place to lose the burdensome grip of the self. In Osborne's narrative, Bangkok serves as an existential crossroads for a cast of British, Australian and Spanish expatriates who are haphazardly searching for and running away from responsibilities; in the labyrinthine city, these tourists have established a playground for adult pleasure. As their documentarian, Osborne is at once incisive and romantic. He creates a character-driven travelogue that reveals but does not exploit the salacious subtext of Bangkok nightlife. It is a journey flush with atmosphere but tempered with a subtext of lonely Western wonder. (June)
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Bangkok Days at Amazon.
