Bangkok Beautiful

Bangkok. Everybody has their opinions about this fine city. One's opinion is usually subject to one's experience and one's experience is vastly varied depending on a plethora of factors. Your sex, your age, the length of time you have lived here, the people you converse with, the area in which you live, the places you spend your leisure time, what you do for a living, how much money you earn, the reasons you came to Thailand in the first place, et cetera.
We all know that the reasons are not always honourable and that, alone, will dictate your daily life here. But honourable or not, if you're an expat living in Bangkok, you have more than likely chosen to be here. If you have chosen to be here, you have decided at some point that you like it here. Well, that's the theory anyway. However, we all know that there are plenty of residents of Bangkok who can't say a single decent thing about the city they've chosen to live in (or flee to - which ever), and that is irrefutably sad.

Bangkok is beautiful. It is exceptionally easy to focus on the negative, its not exactly discreet in this city. It is also easy to complain, and it's annoying all the same.
If you open your eyes, you will see that the sun shines on this city. It is there everyday, and when it isn't, it doesn't go for long. At nightfall, there can be magic in the air...if you actually go outside or your senses haven't been utterly destroyed by the stench of stale sex, or drugs, or misdirected spite.

Bangkok is beautiful for a million different reasons. It is beautiful because there is a corner on Sukhumvit Soi 39 that is drenched in the scent of Eucalyptus on cool breezy nights; because despite what some may think, there is a very distinct change in seasons; because there was a time in my early twenties when I managed to survive off a couple of hundred Baht a week; because every time you step outside, you are bound to see something no one will believe; because the cops that clear you at a drug checkpoint will warn you about the alcohol checkpoint; because I have seen it pour with rain on one side of the road and not the other; because the possibilities are endless....

xoxo