| Book Review: "Bangkok Days" by Lawrence Osborne |
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“Bangkok Days” by Lawrence Osborne is a personal memoir cum philosophical foray into the culture of the East as experienced by the author. He provides the reader a sensory portrait of the fabled Orient, a part of the world that has determinedly remained aloof from Western attempts at literary illustration. Architecture, cuisine and even gender are strangely and alluringly amorphous. The country and its inhabitants are involved in the constant pursuit of identity in a culture that is, by definition, indefinable. Osborne notes that many foreigners have attempted coherent illustration of Bangkok and have failed spectacularly. He personally comes for the allure of cheap dental work, and stays to attempt similar capture of the city’s elusive promise of pleasure. He allows the city to speak for itself, orchestrating a beautiful dialogue between city and expatriate. The appearance of food throughout the book, as an object of both individual liberation and inhibition, is notable.
One striking moment in the book occurs at a restaurant called “No Hands.” Though the name may incite thoughts of lewd and crude activities taking place behind the ornate doors, I found that “No Hands” offered role play of a different nature. Namely, it establishes the perfect microcosm of the delicate and complex Eastern and Western relationship. Here, patrons are fed, watered and cleaned by personal waitresses—Thai women working in the elegant and lofty silence of conscious servitude. They handle chopsticks for their docile clientele, and gasp at the instinctive reach for a napkin or water glass. All is done for you here. “The Westerner,” Osborne writes, “feels quite uncomfortable with this arrangement, because he is naturally inclined to think of service as subservience….here…it is neutral, light.” There is a constant note of subtle sexuality in this exchange, though it is not to be tainted with Western embarrassment and crudity. This is the fallacy of the stringently moral West, and Osborne often entwines sexual cravings with those of hunger, expounding upon man’s unerring search for ultimate satisfaction as epitomized in Thailand. As he lies in recline, surveying the scene and feasting on hand-fed catfish, Osborne reflects on the alternating beauty and ugliness of human relationships. In eating, as in sex, one cannot find true pleasure when truly alone.
Osborne is infatuated with the act of eating and drinking, especially as it expounds on the nature of human society and relationships. Garish dining rooms of the Thai elite are the models of Western affectation rather than Eastern innovation. Bars in proximity to the posh hospitals, teeming with terminally ill expatriates, unquestioningly waltz around IV drips and wheelchairs, cigarette lighters and glass tumblers at the ready. It is an incongruous celebration of life amidst the incontrovertible presence of death. At times, Osborne feels a sense of interconnectivity with his fellow revelers, all joined together in the pursuit of gustatory pleasure. At other times, he feels a sense of cultural disconnect and isolation; it is a moment when he, the reluctant tourist, is confronted with his own, complete “otherness.”
One of the most interesting points made in the book involves a study of social linguistics, at a point when the traveler finds difficulty in procuring the most basic of Thai dishes— noodle soup or guaytio naam— from the street hawkers. This is a dish inaccessible to the non-native speaker, as it is never featured on menus and only procured on the street via verbal request. At the moment when “speech and mouth align,” after some weeks of practice, Osborne finally wins his soup. However desperate Thailand is to achieve modernity, the rudiments of true Thai culture may be found in the simple act of foraging for food on the street. It is fascinating to consider the capabilities of human thought and speech when urged along by hunger. The Hilton may be close by, iced prawns at the ready, but this is not the Bangkok Osborne wants us to know. He realizes, however, that the era of the Hilton grows stronger every day as Thailand moves indefatigably towards Westernization, a term that has become synonymous with “modernity.” He savors each well-won noodle as if it were his last.
Osborne is an accomplished travel writer, and he finds ample source for philosophical introspection in the leaves of the mango trees, in the suggestive walk and stare of the Thai kathoey, or members of the third sex, and in the architectural hodgepodge of old monuments crumbling beneath the shadows of newly erected skyscrapers. Osborne creates a city of beauty in its own right, and it is one in constant conflict of identity. The ancient Siam still lurks in the alleys of Thailand, where Osborne can still procure for his senses the alluring smells of sweet, rotting fruit, the delicate crunch of fried worms and water bugs, or rot duan, and the sound of the soft clink of ice against sweat-beaded glasses. These sounds and smells betray life within the darkened doorframes of earnest desire, of a population in the pursuit of pleasure. Osborne is at once infatuated and appalled at Thai culture’s complete lack of nostalgia for the past. It’s rich history is unceremoniously shunted aside in constant anticipation of its elusive and illusive guest—modernity. The allure of the Orient, not the East, beckons Osborne to its shores time and again. His fascinating account will only enrapture the reader in search of questions, for he rightly, and honestly, offers us no hint of answer. -Natalie Fasano This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it | AIM: askeats | Twitter: eatsdotcom              
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