Postcard from Bangkok, Thailand

[What can be found in Bangkok.]

There’s this old, clichéd version of Bangkok: emblem of all excesses, capital of debauchery, Vegas but with many more miles of dark back alleys that never quite see the light of day.

That is not what I found in Bangkok.

Did I think it would be? Was that cartoon image of Bangkok still in my head? No. But also, not completely no. I found myself noting the presence of ordinary things: schools and trains, coffee shops and street vendors, a wooden shelter where you can buy a ferry ticket and wait for your turn to cross the river. At a reservoir edged with uniform planters of pale-violet bougainvilla, graduates from the nearby university posed for photos. A brilliantly lit tunnel ushered pedestrians safely under a congested intersection. And seemingly every few meters, enormous gilded pictures of Thailand’s current king, in golden robe with golden sword, gleamed sternly above the traffic.

Of course, if I were looking for anything in that clichéd version of Bangkok, I would find it. But no more so than in any other city of 8 million people. And pleasant examples of an agreeable, sun-lit metropolis were everywhere: a family-run street cart in Chinatown where you sit on little red stools and balance your steaming bowl of curry on your lap. Young people in traditional Thai dress posing for selfies at Wat Arun, the big temple on a curve in the river. And while walking through the maze of rooms at the national museum, I found a silent space filled entirely with carved wooden boxes, inlaid with delicate mother-of-pearl flowers.

I found in Bangkok a corrective to a tired, unexamined stereotype of Thailand’s capital. I travel for discoveries like this, ones I didn’t even know I was looking for. Sometimes, though I traveled a long way to find it, the discovery is within.