Lost and Found in Bangkok
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Though Bangkok Days bursts with local color and historical context, the Thai and their perceived “exoticism” are not the central focus. It is the Western farang that is placed under the microscope for further inspection. Like these men, the book is equal parts heartbreak and humor. The travelers have accepted their fates as broken men, yet they do so with a kind of stubborn, good-natured resolve. These men are, above all else, lonely. But Osborne suggests that this loneliness is voluntary, brought on by the impulse to disappear completely. “No one ever truly appreciates how much Robinson Crusoe enjoyed his solitude,” he writes with a nod to Defoe’s lonely island dweller. He is a man alone, the city of millions his island.
Bangkok is a metropolis awash in stimuli—visual, aural, sexual—but Osborne sidesteps the rhapsodic, adjective-drunk prose of most travel writing. No “sun-drenched beaches,” “quaint cobblestone streets,” “picturesque vistas,” and “charming villages” for him. Yet when he allows himself to write sentimentally, his words take on a new grace and poignancy. His brief forays into the poetic seem earned and necessary, not frivolous or self-indulgent.
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