This isn't to say you can't have fun here or that Bangkok doesn't have its highlights. You can and it does, but they come at a high cost. First and worst is the pollution from vehicles. In this case I'd have to rank smog and sound as equally damning.
Bangkok is a black sinus town. Spend only a day walking around and you'll see what I mean. I notice that I unconsciously draw the shallowest of breaths crossing intersections. Waiting for the bus I stand as far back from the curb as possible.
Bangkok has its back alleys and, because Tami and I love to walk, we find and use many of them. The alleys inevitably end, though, dumping you back out on some clogged artery. If you're a walker, you're going to spend too much time scuttling along the edges of big, flowing rivers of smoke-belching steel. Even the all-too-rare green spaces are little islands buffered by little more than fences.
Motor vehicles have an equivalently negative impact on your ears. It's very tough to escape the cacophony. The main road fronting the block where our hotel sits is a huge boulevard, Ratchadamnoen Avenue - 12 lanes of buses, taxis, tuk-tuks, motos, cars, pickups and whatever else can be piloted to race from one stop-lighted intersection to another. Not only is there the raw physical threat to your body from merely trying to cross, the fumes here are especially tortuous. In minutes, my eyes burn. Just looking across a couple-hundred feet of air space you can clearly perceive the haze. The cumulative and non-stop roar of the traffic is like an industrial grand prix. Ratchadamnoen has become as much a psychological barrier as it has a physical one.
As I say, I won't miss much about this town. One sadly ironic inevitability though, is, if you're going to spend any significant time in southeast Asia, you're going to pass through Bangkok. And, because it's so huge and such and inertial sink, your to get stuck here for longer than you'd like. Oooof...
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