Bangkok 8 by John Burdett

In preparation for my trip, I read Bangkok 8 by John Burdett. It's a thriller with a hardcore Buddhist cop, Detective Sonchai Jitpleecheep, as its narrator. To call the novel odd would be an understatement, but that doesn't make it any less brilliant. While a typical farang (foreign) detective would solve crimes by astute investigations and a trusty pistol, Sonchai discovers clues in meditation. The novel features transexuals, a women that shoots darts out of her vagina for a living and an American Marine murdered by dozens of snakes unleashed in his car. Everything is shown as relatively normal through the eyes of Sonchai, a bastard child raised in the brothels by his mom, a retired prostitute that takes online business courses through the Wall Street Journal.

The plot is intentionally disjointed, though it's the descriptions of Bangkok that interested me most. Drugged-up motorcycle taxis blast through the crowded streets at kamikaze speed. Police corruption isn't a problem: it's an accepted fact, and much of the money is donated to charity, which creates a bizarre circle of life. This is one of the things that FBI agent Kimberly Jones notices, and through this back-up character, some of Bangkok's frustrating and seemingly illogical customs look like something out Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.

The Bangkok shown in Bangkok 8 is full of foreigners looking for sex and squatters constantly drunk on rice wine. The author, a white man, notes in the beginning of the book that Bangkok is one of the great cities of the world and that "most visitors to the kingdom enjoy wonder vacations without coming across any evidence of sleaze at all." Of course, everything in the novel shouldn't be taken literally, but in just a few days, I can compare the pages to my first-hand experience.