Bangkok

BANGKOK, Thailand -- It's clean, it's fast, it's punctual, and it offers a breathtaking view of some of the world's most spectacular traffic jams.It is the long-delayed Skytrain, a 16-mile, $1.7 billion elevated rail system that opened for business yesterday, snaking above a city that -- like so many others in Asia -- is strangling on its own traffic.Called "the train that floats in the air" in Thai, it is a small start to the city's 180-mile mass transit master plan.The privately financed rail system is Bangkok's most ambitious attempt to deal with the near gridlock that is sometimes described as its defining landmark.

BANGKOK -- The drill grinds away, stopping only to let the hammers take their turn. They tap in nails, thud against concrete, bang against steel girders. Then the drill drowns it all out again.Why do the developers bother to finish this high-rise "luxury" apartment building? Even when they've installed cable television and matching sofas and love seats, who's going to move in?As Bangkok faces its worst economic crisis since World War II, the foreign speculators and the local middle class -- the target groups for new condominiums -- have already fled in droves.

BANGKOK, Thailand -- Aboard a wooden rice barge chugging up Bangkok's Chao Praya River, Alex Melamid, a New York-based Russian artist, solemnly informs the assembled guests that modern painting has reached an impasse.Art has nothing left to say, he says, and so: "We must now employ other species to do our work." He sketches out plans for an art school for elephants and concludes, "I would like to see elephant art everywhere."Next, an earnest young New Yorker billed as a specialist on "inter-species art" lauds the use by elephants' of "tertiary color somewhat like Gauguin" and their "complex use of negative space."

CHIANG MAI, Thailand -- At the five main gates of Chiang Mai's old city, people gathered recently for an ancient ceremony called Inthakin. Buddhist monks in saffron robes chanted as people offered flowers, incense and candles to ask for rain and bountiful crops.But the raucous traffic jams around the gates muffled the chants, and the fumes from cars and motorbikes overpowered the sweet smell of incense.Chiang Mai, former capital of the Lanna Thai Kingdom, celebrated its 702nd birthday this year.

BANGKOK, Thailand -- The search for American country-western music in the Orient begins on Cowboy Alley, a neon strip of girlie bars saturated with Old West cliches. The names say it all. Lucky Star, Apache, Long Gun, Country Roads I and II. Inside, longhorn skulls, branding irons, saddles, lassos and stirrups adorn the walls.The petite Thai "waitresses" are like Dolly Parton without the bust or rhinestones or Southern accent. They sweat stoically in the tropical heat, parading around in knee-length boots, frilly skirts, embroidered shirts and bolo ties.

BANGKOK, THAILAND -- He was stooped in a corner on the hot pavement, his body shaking, his arms wrapped around head and face as if to keep the world at bay. There was a long silence when I asked why he was crying."

BANGKOK, Thailand -- Like many other middle class Thais these days, Nam Ruangvuthi looked lost, puzzled, worried - and angry. On a recent morning, he knelt at a shrine of one of Thailand's past royalty and prayed for fortune in finding a new job.From there, he walked over to a street in front of Government House and joined several thousand people who were shouting and thrusting fists in the air to demand that Prime Minister Chavalit Yongchaiyudh resign.Nam...

London -- What does it mean, that such frenzy of excitement should be generated among the youth of Bangkok or Jakarta, when they learn that some American star is to perform? What is the significance of the suddenly altered appearance of a whole generation of young people, in emulation of the latest superstar to hit the scene? What can be the cause of the rush to acquire the merchandising that goes with the promotion of the most recent multi-million-dollar blockbuster?What drives the emerging middle class to the McDonald's stores all over South Asia, exposing their already overweight kids to commerciogenic malnutrition from excessive intake of burgers and Slurpees?

Love is a many-squalored thing.That's the thrust of "The Good Woman of Bangkok," a strange and poignant film opening today at the Charles. The movie also played last spring at the Baltimore Film Festival.This is one of those unvarnished, almost pathetic movies of personal documentation in which the true subject is the filmmaker himself as he comes to grips with his own obsessions. Dennis O'Rourke, an Australian documentarian who acquired a world reputation on the strength of an earlier work, "Cannibal Tours," woke up one day to find his professional life a shambles and his private life a catastrophe.

While troops sprayed bullets into pro-democracy crowds in Bangkok May 17 and 18, Thais asked each other in hushed tones: "Where is the King? Why doesn't he do something?"Wednesday, after hundreds had been shot, the widely respected king appeared on television with the military-backed prime minister and the opposition leader and called for a compromise -- an end to army shooting and to demonstrations; and constitutional changes to bar any non-elected prime minister. Within hours, the king's message calmed the mobs and troops left the streets of Bangkok.

BANGKOK, Thailand - Thai authorities shut down Bangkok's second airport today after it was overrun by anti-government protesters, completely cutting off the capital from air traffic as the prime minister rejected their demands to resign, deepening the country's crisis. Prime Minister Somchai Wongsawat says his government will keep functioning despite demands by the army chief and demonstrators that he call new elections to resolve the political crisis. "I reassure the people that this government, which is legitimate and came from elections, will keep functioning until the end," Somchai said in a nationally televised speech yesterday.

BANGKOK, Thailand --At least six small bombs exploded around Bangkok yesterday, killing two people and wounding more than 20 in a city that remains under martial law after a coup three months ago. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attacks. Two more bombs went off moments later near a downtown mall, wounding eight people, including six foreigners, police said. New Year's celebrations were officially canceled in Bangkok and the northern city of Chiang Mai. But when midnight struck, cheers went up in Bangkok and the sky was filled with fireworks.

"I am so very sorry for what happened to JonBenet. . . . Her death was an accident." John Mark Carr Carr told reporters in Bangkok, Thailand, where he was arrested last week, that he was with JonBenet Ramsey when she died in December 1996. But the district attorney in Boulder, Colo., where the 6-year-old girl was killed, warned the public not to "jump to conclusions" in the case.

Michael Lang grew up in the 1950s fascinated by the cool guys with slicked-back hair and cigarettes dangling from their lips who hung out at Benny Kitt's pool hall in West Baltimore. Lang wasn't one of them, but as a teen-ager he found a way into their world through his camera - an old Leica with a fast lens that allowed him to take moody, atmospheric, film noir-like photographs of the characters he encountered in Benny's dark, smoky interior. The photographs went into a box and stayed there until 1995, when Lang, by then a research scientist at the National Institutes of Health, looked at them again and realized he had unwittingly captured a pungent and historically important slice of Baltimore's storied past.

BOSTON - There was a moment last month when the Bush administration overturned Roe vs. Wade. You may not have noticed because it happened in Bangkok - out of sight, out of media mind. Our government went there to try to deep-six a U.N. agreement on family planning. After one of our delegates promoted abstinence-only education, after another warned of the risks of condoms, after a third shared her personal success story using the rhythm method, Assistant Secretary of State Gene Dewey took the podium.

BANGKOK -- A Thai king pondered building it in the 17th century. A European power began construction and then abandoned it in the 1800s. Politicians debated its merits throughout the 20th century. For more than 300 years, monarchs, dictators and engineers have considered digging a canal across southern Thailand to link the South China Sea with the Indian Ocean. Such a project would drastically reshape maritime trade -- and deter piracy. The scheme has moved closer to implementation with the release of a $4 million multiyear study by a Tokyo-based foundation.

THINGS ARE the same in Bangkok, Thailand, as they are back home, yet very different, I thought as I looked down from the porch of an apartment there every morning for the past month during vacation. Below I could see children going off to school dressed in uniforms of navy skirt and slacks, sun-bleached white shirts and blouses. Off to the side, an electric "sky train" quietly shuttled men and women to their jobs. Barking dogs, the buzzing sound of motorcycles and the honking of cars punctuated the air. Some houses had television antennas on the roofs, and there were partially constructed buildings waiting to be completed.

BANGKOK, Thailand -- On the wrong street at the wrong time of day, the air here is an intoxicating elixir of exhaust and soot suspended in tropical torpor. And then there are the really bad blocks. Like Ploenchit Road, near the intersection where Mater Dei School sits cater-corner to the Central department store. During rush hour, Thais who scurry through this stretch press white cloths to their mouths in a gasping effort to filter the caustic swirl. Tourists eye the block as if entering an alley where surely something foul lurks.

BANGKOK, Thailand -- It's clean, it's fast, it's punctual, and it offers a breathtaking view of some of the world's most spectacular traffic jams.It is the long-delayed Skytrain, a 16-mile, $1.7 billion elevated rail system that opened for business yesterday, snaking above a city that -- like so many others in Asia -- is strangling on its own traffic.Called "the train that floats in the air" in Thai, it is a small start to the city's 180-mile mass transit master plan.The privately financed rail system is Bangkok's most ambitious attempt to deal with the near gridlock that is sometimes described as its defining landmark.

CHIANG MAI, Thailand -- At the five main gates of Chiang Mai's old city, people gathered recently for an ancient ceremony called Inthakin. Buddhist monks in saffron robes chanted as people offered flowers, incense and candles to ask for rain and bountiful crops.But the raucous traffic jams around the gates muffled the chants, and the fumes from cars and motorbikes overpowered the sweet smell of incense.Chiang Mai, former capital of the Lanna Thai Kingdom, celebrated its 702nd birthday this year.