Thursday, Jul 24, 2008
Despite sex scandals and overspeculation, Bangkok residents still find reasons to smile.
Sep 4, 1999 | The rains came early to Bangkok this year, with April showers taking the edge off what is normally Thailand's hottest month. Big black thunderheads crashed over the city in May and June, churning the Chao Phraya into an unruly cappuccino-colored torrent as intrepid pedestrians hiked up skirts and trouser legs to wade barefoot through flooded roadways. Then in mid-July, a different kind of tempest raged through the capital, after the international edition of Newsweek published a controversial cover story under the headline "Beyond Sex and Golf: Money is pouring in. But can Bangkok escape the low-cost rap and join the high-tech world?"
The 2,000-word commentary on Thailand's prospects for economic recovery raised eminently level-headed concerns about corruption, greed and cronyism in the upper echelons of Thai society. The minor furor, however, erupted in reaction to one essentially irrelevant quip, attributed to an unnamed Western diplomat, which Newsweek's editors mined for the headline. "Thailand has two comparative advantages," the source said: "sex and golf courses."
That statement alone was enough to spark heated debate in the halls of power and in the op-ed pages of local newspapers, and the magazine's layout added fuel to the fire: Although the article was ostensibly devoted to serious economic matters, the opening spread featured a three-column image of a scantily clad Thai woman cruising Pattaya's sleazy nightlife district on a motorbike with a Caucasian man in tow. The cover photo showed a magnificent golden stupa with the ridiculous teaser "Thailand: If only its economy looked as good as its temples." Huh?
An important point Newsweek's reporters raised briefly, then brushed aside with another reference to "the raunchy strip bars of Pattaya," is that mainstream tourism -- not just the naughty kind -- has been the one bright spot in Thailand's ailing economy. While the manufacturing and financial sectors have stumbled, exchange rates have remained favorable, the government has remained stable, visitor arrivals are up and business is booming along the beaches of Phuket and Koh Samui.
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The Asian economic crisis began here in July 1997, when the baht plummeted on international currency markets and the Thais could no longer afford to pay interest on the foreign loans that had financed the nation's rapid growth in the 1980s and '90s. The baht has recovered somewhat since then, but the collapse has left its mark on Bangkok's cluttered skyline in the form of delinquent construction sites where massive erections of concrete and Rebar have been abandoned by bankrupt developers and left to fester in the tropical heat.
These crumbling monuments to excessive speculation serve as a constant reminder of how far Thailand's economy has fallen, forcing laid-off construction workers to return to farms and villages in the northeast, forcing commercial and residential property owners to cope with tenants who can't pay the rent and forcing formerly high-flying executives to liquidate golf clubs, Rolexes and other icons of affluence from the boots of their beloved Mercedes.
Even so, the juice has not all been sucked from the Big Mango.
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