Customer Reviews

Bangkok Days

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Initially I thought I related to "Bangkok Days" because I have visited Bangkok six times. The book is comprised of twenty-seven short independent chapters. Since I visited most places Osborne describes I related to his narrative. Then I thought I liked the book because of Osborne's literary craftsmanship. Some of his sentences are amazing! Often I wondered how long it took Osborne to write this? For instance, in discussing a Catholic nun, " . . . her white hair sticking up like the crest of some strange and sympathetic reptile, and I shook her hot hand. She seemed to suffer in the heat."

But the book is not about Bangkok. It is about us. In the West we accept our relationships and cities as the best of all possible worlds even if they are often frighteningly boring, clean, neat, totally predictable and vacuous. We love "antiseptic wastelands." Bangkok is far, far more interesting, even if a great deal more chaotic, dirty and smelly - but oh, so interesting! We accept power, prestige and wealth to be the only worthwhile values in life. "Bangkok Days" asks whatever happened to fun - is there room in the West for pleasure? Perhaps Osborne's search in Bangkok is a metaphor for our search for the other half of our souls?

Yes, this is a "love letter to Bangkok." A must read!

I visited Bangkok for the first time only weeks before reading this book, and really enjoyed following the adventures of Lawrence Osbourne in a small underworld community of foreign transplants to Bangkok. It's a travelogue, and nothing too momentous happens, but the sights, sounds, impressions, are beautifully narrated. I particularly enjoyed the naked honesty and self-irony Osbourne employs in describing some truly awkward moments. I laughed out loud many times, but also felt sad, engaged, and provoked at different times throughout this thoughtful story.

Part personal journal and part travel writing, "Bangkok Days" is a street-eyed, alley-eyed, canal-eyed, sidewalk-eyed take on a brutal city where mystery and honesty, myth and reality, fable and truth all collide. It's been twenty years since my lone visit to Bangkok, but Osborne's writing brought it all back. I was a mere tourist, Osborne is a writer who knows how to stay with a subject and dig deep. The feeling of reading "Bangkok Days" is to see Bangkok inside-out. There is romance-free. The tales are drowned (occasionally) in booze as Osborne and his assortment of colorful companions explore various parts of the city or re-explore familiar ones. You will gain a keen insight into the recent protests, glean some brief spiritual Thai history and have a few myths exploded, most notably a wonderful section that deconstructs everything about the "King and I" and Yul Brynner. "Bangkok Days" is an explanation of the city precisely because it sets out not to be an explanation of the city. The book is essentially a series of broad brush strokes with occasional flashes of poetry. It's as much about Osborne as it is about Bangkok, so don't be fooled going in. "The restaurant was on the second floor, an Ayurvedic buffet with cumin-sprinkled boiled eggs thrown in to appease the frustrated carnivores. The idea behind the spa was to control one's intake of calories to a bare minimum determined on the day of one's arrival by the in-house nutritionist. Fortunately, the guy had fled to Bangkok and the buffet therefore seemed morally aimless. The waiters lit a candle for us; the windows rattled and whined. Lionel and McGinnis, against all odds, had dressed in jackets and ties, paradoxically appropriate in this spare, high-minded décor, and we broke open a bottle of Evian while speaking in whispers, as one often does in a totally empty space." The sub-title of "Bangkok Days" is "A Sojourn in the Capital of Pleasure" and Osborne fully captures the attitude shift that allows the skin commerce to flourish. But in the end "Bangkok Days" is a mood put to words, an attempt to capture the deep and unusual vibe of that city--its food, colors, smells, humanity, religion, challenges and delights.

READ THIS BOOK! In the vast sea of current literature only a few books leave me with a lasting impression and 'Bangkok Days' is one of them. It haunts you with vivid imagery and deeply sensitive, international insight. ALIVE, subtle, adventerous, and so well written that you could swear that this books soul purpose is to cure the malaise of everyday life. So, to whoever has stumbled across this review, it is my suggestion that you give 'Bangkok Days' a try - I suspect you will not be disappointed.

Probably best not to visit Bangkok at the moment.

It's all kicking off.

Sit back and read a book instead.

Bangkok Days by self-confessed 'lazy ****' Lawrence Osborne is an alternative, and slighty seedy account of the lives of ex-pats in modern Thailand. He originally visits the city for some cheap dentistry (cost of flights, hotel and dentist's bills cheaper than having the work done at home) but soon realises that he can get by on just a few dollars a day - the perfect scenario for someone who appears to be an ageing slacker - so decides to stay for a while and soon hooks up with a ragtag bunch of Westerners in his Bangkok apartment block.

You'll find no ladyboys here, sorry to disappoint. Instead you will discover a cast of drunks, rogues and scoundrels blagging their way around Thailand's capital city. Most of them appear to be on the run from something in their past. All of them have a story to tell, some of which Osborne manages to pry out of them.

And it is all pretty entertaining as far as it goes, although I was a bit thrown about a third of the way through when the timeline seemed to change. Osborne returns to Bangkok to track down some of his old acquaintances but it wasn't obvious that he had actually left in the first place. One minute he is there, next minute he has come back. No mention of him leaving in the middle. That bugged me.

So a slightly grubby, somewhat frustrating but overall entertaining read and refreshingly different from the usual travel fodder.

Osborne's book presents a deft dance between Anglo cultural paralysis and the steamy, messy promise of the East. He manages to avoid romanticizing Bangkok by showing us the ways that the city affirms rather than annuls the loneliness of the western male ghosts who mostly populate his canvas. And the sexual and gustatory promiscuities that prop up the heat-wilted balloon of Bangkok life are ecstatic only in the moment. Yet, for this very reason, the tenor of solitude takes on a strangely Buddhist cast. These characters might be damned, but they're damned in part for how completely they've melted into the here and now. Osborne shows us that the underbelly of Nirvana may not be all that different from the topbelly. With the depth of this meditation, there's a great deal of humor here as well--rich language and observation of the physical fabric of a major city. All of it brings home to the reader the endlessly mysterious exoticisms and simply seedy ins and outs of his or her own fleshly being.

Lawrence Osborne relates tales of his Bangkok days in short vignettes that take us to places the average tourist is not likely to see. The advantage of that is the glimpse we have of a different Bangkok; the disadvantage is that many of these places see no tourists for good reasons. They are not interesting, and neither is the telling of them. So I found myself skipping over much of Bangkok Days, and enjoying only segments of the story. (The trip to Hua Hin fascinates.) But for someone who has traveled frequently to Bangkok, my view is not his. For one, the company of women takes up much of the story, the seedy side of the street gets fair notice. I did not see the drug epidemic that he writes of, but then, I don't travel in those circles. Osborne comes to the joy of the Chao Praya River only in the last pages, but for me it is the life of the city, with all the commerce leading one to imagine stories that a single individual can never master.

This is a book for only those who have been to Bangkok. The places Osborn mentions and the narrative can only be of merit if you have had the opportunity to have been to BKK and have a feel for the city. Not a bad read but not as good, in my opinion, as most of his other works. Rgds, bkkmonger

I liked this book a lot. If you've been to Bangkok a couple of times I think you will recognize much that the author has to say even though some of his geography is off a little bit. It has some very good insights into the nature of the city and the people...both locals and visitors. Granted a good bit of it does deal with nightlife that will not be everyone's cup of tea. And he takes us to plenty of other dark places as well. But of course he also introduces us to a number of aimless farang characters whom he befriends or at least be-acquaintances. It's clear that he spent several years in the city and spent most of his time away from the places tourists visit.

It's a shame he didn't really interact a whole lot with Thais and seemed to be mostly interested in telling us about the messed up Brits and Aussies and staying in his own bubble. But it does lend a certain amount of entertainment to the story. And there are some parts that are laugh out loud funny.

I happened to also be in Bangkok at the time of the last coup which he touches on slightly but apparently must have occurred after the timeframe recounted in the book.

Overall I think it is a fun read and as others have mentioned he certainly does have a way with words. I think Bangkok fans will have some good memories brought up while reading it, I certainly did.

The book describes Bangkok in a captivating way , so much that it made me want to plan a trip following Larry Osborne's steps. While doing my homework I was greatly surprised to discover Larry copied or at least took insipiration from Wikipedia, just read the first page of the chapter Moveable feasting and then google for Trok Matoom choosing the wikipedia page: you'll find the same words about Trok Matoom and Trok Khao Mao so...it seems he sort of cheated...Anyway the book is well worth reading and I'll take my trip anyway. Cheers!