From a recent World Hum interview with Lawrence Osborne:
Not far from the apartment where my wife and I lived in Bangkok, there was a narrow canal that wound through the city. One night, we laid awake listening as the rain fell in thick sheets. By morning, the canal had swollen over and flooded the streets. All that day, we trudged across the city in water up to our knees, while things we couldn’t see brushed against our legs and got caught in our toes.
In a way, this is what Bangkok always feels like: an opaque place where you can never quite see beneath the surface. Few outsiders understand it, and there is very little good writing on
it. But now, Lawrence Osborne, author of The Naked Tourist: In Search of Adventure and Beauty in the Age of the Airport Mall, has given Thailand’s City of Angels the book it deserves. Bangkok Days: A Sojourn in the Capital of Pleasure is a wistful, vivid account of the time he has spent in the capital among the drifting souls that wash up there. I talked to him by phone about the elusive quality of Thai culture, loneliness, and about why Bangkok’s sex trade isn’t really about sex.
For the rest, click here.
I’ve had a few bad jobs in my time. Among them, cleaning dog crap-filled kennels, doing mind-crushing data entry, and digging through several weeks worth of moldering beer cans at a recycling factory. So when I got a chance to write about a company that lets people try out their dream job, I jumped at it. Even though I’m happily self-employed now, I remember all too clearly this feeling that my life was slowly circling the drain, and the madness to escape. If that rings a bell, read on:
