Review of Bangkok Days in Florida Weekly, June 2009

Bangkok Days: A Sojourn in the Capital of Pleasure By Lawrence Osborne (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $25)
BEACH READING
REVIEWED BY KATY B. OLSON Special to Florida Weekly

Author and adventurer Lawrence Osborne finds himself among scamps and scoundrels, monks and prostitutes, as he makes his way through Bangkok’s labyrinthine days and hazy nights. Visiting and revisiting the city over the years to satisfy not only his yen for adventure, but also to make the most of his few dollars, his exploits and his encounters with other hotblooded men on the lam reveal both the volatility and tranquility of a foreigner’s Bangkok experience.

Underneath the city’s constant, hovering haze, against the backdrop of wideeyed prostitutes and neon-lit girly bars, memoirist Osborne explores the ins and outs of a seemingly contradictive metropolis where entrenched Buddhism and a deep-rooted pursuit of pleasure don’t collide, but comfortably coexist. The frankness shared by the Thais and pursued by foreign escapees forms the basis of the city’s attraction and mystery. Experiencing the shared vices and accompanying neuroses of fellow Western ex-pats, the author explores what it means to be what the Thai call a “farang,” a foreigner, an outsider in a culture whose definitions of pleasure and sin are quite different from the West’s.

Even more than relentless gratification, though, Osborne finds that Bangkok

provides a

primitive rawness, a pure, unpretentious way of life that has been scrubbed from other urban hubs like New York, removed from the places that daring people most want to escape. He says, “I’m not sure I have much talent, and if I did have some, I wouldn’t go around talking about it. ... I think I came here to escape exactly that.”

A city that is perhaps less intricate than the untamed loners who are so drawn to it, Osborne’s “Bangkok Days” is a living, breathing exploration of one of the world’s most alluring, most mysterious places, and a full-color portrait of the souls who inhabit it. 