Bangkok rain and Thailand of old.....

Bangkok has got some rain. It's just started and is refreshing and cool and brought with it a cool wind. Looks like it could be a good downpour. The daughter has run outside with her brolly to stand in the rain for no apparent reason. Maybe now we're in December it will start being a bit more like winter.

I'm reading an old book I picked up at the Neilson Hays Library. It's called A White Man in Thailand by S. Conyers-Keynes. It was written in the fifties about the authors' time spent in Bangkok before and during the first world war. If you want to know what Thailand, and specifically Bangkok, was like almost a hundred years ago it is worth hunting for. There's a picture of Rajdemnern Avenue taken in 1910 and it's easy to see where it got the avenue bit from. It was a lovely tree-lined avenue that could have been in any European city, instead of the concrete clad grid-locked chaos it has become. The author arrived in Thailand reluctantly but learnt to love Thailand. His opinion of early twentieth century Thais is very positive. Despite the abundance of snakes, mozzies and heat it seems it really was an interesting, charming and cosmopolitan place to be. Where did it all go wrong?

In the time it has taken me to write this the rains have stopped. Already the roads are drying and the sun is beginning to poke through. So, no winter then.

Bangkok rain and Thailand of old.....