Bangkok Transport Survival Guide.

Meter-taxis.

Does he know where he’s going? Does he even care? Sure he does. He's your friendly farang loving taxi driver. Just jump in and point to the meter. Sit back. Relax. Enjoy the Bangkok scenery crawl past for an hour or so before your driver admits he hasn’t the foggiest idea where you are. Last week he was planting rice in Surin. Now he's in Bangkok City. Pay the fare (with a generous tip ) and step out onto a strange street lined with stalls selling fried insects. There's a funky smell in the air. Don’t be alarmed. Just hold out your hand to the oncoming traffic. There are hundreds more clueless taxis itching to whisk you away and spit you out at your unintended destination. Repeat until intelligent driver found.

Tuk-tuk.

Tuk-tuk mister? Speak English? Only 20 baht? Where you want to go? Sexy lady? Now Happy Hour? Look only? Yeah. You have to love these guys. Great for tailor-shops, government gem stores or anywhere else the driver has a nasty little scam brewing. Don’t believe the temples are closed. They aren’t closed. Temples never close. Use Tuk-tuks only once. Take photograph. Post photo on facebook. And never use one of these two-stroke scamming pollution buckets again.

Skytrain.

Now we’re talking. Great for those that haven’t yet figured out the bus routes or enjoy travelling like cattle on the way to market. The views are great and the only way to travel lower Sukhumvit to Siam if you don’t have a more than a week to make the journey. Avoid use during sociable hours.

MRT.

Frighteningly modern. The rotfia shuttles beneath sin city with the precision of a polished lug through the barrel of a high-class bean-shooter. Climb down into the subterranean utopia. The London Tube this is not. Clean, precise, fast. Only the Germans could achieve such a thing.

Airport Link.

So modern. So clean. So smooth. How did they do it? Siemens again. So German. Over ten minutes wait between trains excludes this as a commuter option. But for getting into the city from the airport (what it was intended for) this is a thing of beauty. Just make sure your hotel is next to the airport link stop. I hear the Nasa Vegas is nice. Otherwise refer to the rest of this list and the best of British to ya.

Bangkok Buses.

Wow. What a network? Bangkok bus system reaches every nook and cranny in the city. The fast-track-training scheme for drivers gives Somchai from Ubon another chance in life. Last week he was driving an old beat up Honda wave and drinking white whiskey on the farm. He was thinking about suicide daily. Now he has a fast speed passenger vehicle and enough ya ba to propel him to work double shifts. Accidents? Pah. He fed a mangy soi dog some sticky rice this morning so there’s no way this love boat's gonna crash, baby.

Motorbike taxis.

An unemployable toe-rag buys a vest from the mob. Cost? anywhere from 1k to 500k. He joins the motorcycle taxi gang for life. You need to find out a bus route? Want to pay a bill? Deliver a package? Ask a motorbike taxi. You want to find out where the cheap accommodation is? Ask the dude in the orange vest. Motorbike taxis know everything. Everything apart from how to drive a motorcycle. Use only in emergencies and keep in mind if you do crash and need immediate medical attention you are in luck. A motorbike taxi is the only means of transportation that will get you to the emergency room with any chance of being alive on arrival, as long as you don't crash again, on the way.


Foot.

You. Are. Never. Safe. On. Foot. You see those black and white lines painted across the road? Now, they may look like zebra crossings. In fact they are designated suicide zones. Cross by all means, but don’t expect to live. See those red lanes painted on the sidewalk with pictures of bicycles painted on them? Those are motorbike lanes. In fact all sidewalks, pavements, and footpaths are motorbike lanes. Bangkok is the only city in the world where you can skilfully cross four lanes of traffic and make it to the pavement the other side of the road only to be mowed down by a Honda Wave 125cc.

River taxi.

Wet.

Conculsion.

Enjoy travelling in Bangkok. And when that bus races through lanes of traffic, narrowly avoiding collision at every jerk of the wheel spare a little thought. When that Tuk-tuk pulls a wheely in rush-hour traffic. When the guy in the orange vest doesn't have a spare helmet. Remember In Thailand death is not the end. It is simply the transition to a better life.

Christopher G. Moore. A Killing Smile.

Very much a book of its time A Killing Smile is both a work of fiction and a guidebook for those heading to the neon underworld of Bangkok's bar scene. Before the internet one had to turn to a novels like A Killing Smile to find out the juicy details about 'the scene'. The stuff that didn't make it into the guidebooks made it into works of fiction. The kind of information that may save a tourist from a broken heart, an empty bank account, or worse. Christopher G. Moore is the pioneer of Bangkok noir fiction. He has written about life and all her bruises in Bangkok for decades. A killing Smile is the book that got the ball rolling. Isaan b-girls, cutters, pissers, the scammers, the actresses. And their customers; lost alcoholics, grifters, chancers. Moore's writings are brilliant observations on the Bangkok nightlife and this one book is the benchmark that all other books on the Bangkok bar scene (including Christopher G. Moore's) have had to follow. It set the standard of an artistic movement: Bangkok Noir. US lawyer Lawrence Barings’ wife Sarah dies in an auto accident. Lawrence travels to Bangkok to find his old college pal Tuttle stagnating in the Bangkok bars. There are no great plot twists. Little action. But the novel makes up for this with its richness in characters, description, dialogue and most of all setting. The cast is fantastic. Crosby the English trust fund kid who grew up on hookers and darkness. Snow who wants to go up north with a box of New York magic tricks to become a Lahu Godman. The tussle between Lawrence's western lifestyle and Tuttle's expat existence frames the major conflict and theme of the book. The novel deals with cultural shifts, personal adjustments, death and acceptance. The novel is mainly written in third person, yet switches to second person to add descriptive depth. It also employs journal articles and letters. In many ways the novel was and is a creative triumph. It is a book I will read from time to time noticing something new each visit.

Ten Greatest Dead Expat Writers

What is it about leaving the home of your birth and writing a book? The romance of new cultures? Cheaper living costs? bohemian sensibilities? Whatever it is moving away seems to remove writing blocks and sets an artist free. I've picked ten of my favorite expat authors who are no longer with us.





10) Although Joseph Conrad is considered one of the best English novelists he did not actually learn to speak English until he was 21. Conrad was born in Poland and orphaned at the age of 11. He joined the French merchant navy at 16 and spent much of his early years on the high seas. At many points in his life, he became involved in illegal activities (such as gunrunning) and was often embroiled in political intrigue.





9) George Orwell. Born in India and came of age as a young policeman in Burma. Down and out in Paris and London. George was often happiest away from home. A great writer and a great mind Orwell is also known as one of the greatest essayists of the twentieth century.





8) Vladimir Nabokov. Forced to flee the Bolshevik revolution Nabokov moved to Cambridge and then Berlin, and then Paris. As the Nazis moved in closer he jumped on a ship to the USA where he penned the classic Lolita. One of the great novelists of the 20th cent, Nabokov was an extraordinarily imaginative writer, often experimenting with the form of the novel. Although his works are frequently obscure and puzzling—filled with grotesque incidents, word games, and literary allusions





7) Henry Miller. The grumpy old man of letters found solace in Paris for ten years before retreating to his isolated Big Sur home. "All growth is a leap in the dark, a spontaneous unpremeditated act without benefit of experience."





6) Graham Greene. Travelled to what he called the worlds wildest and most remote places before finally settling near Lake Geneva. His observations on south Esat Asia have only been matched by modern writers such as Christopher G. Moore.





5) Anthony Burgess. Taught English in a Malaya classroom where he penned his Asian trilogy before being shipped back to England with a suspected brain tumor where he wrote A Clockwork Orange, reviewed books, and became a celebrity.





4) William Burroughs. Shot his wife in Mexico and fled to Tangiers where he hit the pharmacia for synthetic dope and hammered out Naked Lunch in the Socco Chico before landing at the Beat Hotel Paris. In Paris the Olympia Press published the nightmarish visions that became a canon of the counter-culture 20th century revolution. He returned to the states a cult legend in his sixties.





3) James Joyce. Emigrated in his early twenties to Zurich, Austro-Hungry and then Paris. This modernist legend lived in self-imposed exile his entire life, yet strangely only wrote about his native Dublin.





2) Somerset Maugham. Highest paid author during the 1930s, Maugham travelled to the pacific islands to research his novel on artist Gauguin. Wrote of the isolation and madness of the British colonials in the Far East.





1)Ernest Hemingway. As a young man formed part of the Parisian Lost Generation. Nobel-prize winner and legendary author spent many months shooting game in Africa and his later days in Cuba. Hemingway was a true expat at heart and some would argue that his spare economic writing style is the greatest prose ever published.