I know this may be asking a bit much for a Midweek Rant.

But can I please ask on behalf of those of us who have made Bangkok our home?

When will our City of Angels be finished?

You see I am not getting any younger and I am genuinely concerned that all of you beavering away to try and improve it will still be doing just that when I am passing through my local temple’s chimney.

On the way to another heavenly capital somewhere in the clouds that will hopefully have been long since completed.

It’s not that I am ungrateful for all the improvements since arriving in the 1980s.

For example, all those pipes you put in in Sukhumvit Road and elsewhere certainly helped with the flooding that used to stay festering on the ground from one month to the next.

The stores and the supermarkets have been a boon for my shopaholic wife – I don’t even blame you for my bank balance going down.

The sky train and the underground have been great, even the busses are a tad less smelly – it has all made the city so much better.

But everywhere I look the evidence is mounting up.

Nearly four decades down the line and it just seems as far away from finished as ever.

I’m not blaming you for the traffic per se. But was it really necessary to build about ten major rail projects all at the same time?

Yes, I know some of you wanted to return happiness to us after all those barricades and shouting but have you ever thought you might be overdoing it a little.

Might your pursuit of happiness on our behalf be a little overzealous?

Could you not have put a little store by the “P” word.

Progress? The Public? Prosperity?

No, no…the word I am thinking about is planning.

How nice it would have been if someone somewhere had had an idea to stagger all these projects, just to make life in the intervening years a little more bearable for the average Bangkokian.

We are, after all, the lifeblood of the nation…40% of GDP doesn’t lie!

I mean I love riding a motorcycle on these wide boulevards.

I always leave the car at home to avoid murdering the wife and kids when stuck in bumper to bumper traffic.

But now we are all stuck on the bike – all four of us….there is nowhere for even two wheeled transport to move. Unless it’s three AM.

And all those signs saying 5,000 baht fines for riding on the sidewalks are scaring me into submission. Even if I know you really don’t mean it.

Perhaps you could just let up for a year or two. Do a “Hopewell” on a few of the new projects and open up some floor-space to traffic for a few months.

Just to show willing, you understand. Give a bit of respite to the weary.

And could you put some new signs in please to tell me where I am. There are so many new buildings around or being demolished that all my
landmarks have gone. It’s a bit like when my local pub in England was shut down – I don’t know where I am anymore.

I thought I knew Bangkok now I am just as bewildered as the tourists off the plane who think it is all great fun. It just isn’t fair – I’ve paid my taxes, you see.

Rather like looking after grandchildren the tourists don’t mind – they can give Bangkok back at the end of their stay.

We have to live here. Day in day out.

Now I know it is true that much of Bangkok is so ugly that it needs to be torn down and replaced.

But how about coming up with a schedule – and sticking to it so that the residents know what is going on.

Some of us lucky ones might even be able to move out for a while so you can finish the relevant bit that impacts us the most.

We wouldn’t mind going somewhere dull like Hua Hin or Pattaya for a while if we knew that such a “prison sentence” had a reasonably chance
of time off for good behavior.

Then we could get back to normal. And smile those famous Bangkok smiles.

I said it in the 1980s when it usually got a laugh.

Maybe some in the 90s thought it still worth a grin.

But by the noughties the joke was wearing decidedly thin.

What was that I said?

“I like Bangkok – but I’ll really love it when it’s finished”.

So please try and complete the job as soon as possible. For the sake of my love affair.

At least before the inevitable happens with my visit to the temple; and everybody else sinks beneath the encroaching waves of the Gulf.

By which time you’ll have to start all over again.

I’ll probably be looking down glad I’m not there for that.

Lowest Rates Bangkok