The Great Siamese Saloon Series/The Authors' Lounge
Brookhiser, Richard
THE GREAT SIAMESE SALOON SERIES THE AUTHORS' LOUNGE by Richard Brookhiser W esterners think of everything would "learn about the country" there- with their work. Since they have been automobiles,...
...The first, Mongkut, New York...
...The list of ingredients included getic Thai kings...
...The walls are decorated with The problem of where to get a drink National Review and a columnist for powers...
...The Oriental's admirers call it the homosexual orgy at the court of Freder- sail up river an hour to his palace at tuks...
...Since they have been automobiles, or arrayed in top hats...
...The civilization in which than to ogle prostitutes doing tricks ship's captain, not a literatus...
...Some make me won- by Europeans...
...The canals that darting yellow-striped taxi-boats, their really good dentist's mouthwash...
...hotel keeps a pair of bookcases stocked century, testing their newfangled is still solved by the Authors' Lounge...
...Which is, Let me dispose of the inescapable most of the famous folk who have along with their Fortnum and Mason's of course, an even greater tribute...
...It may well have ick the Great, once was philosophy, Bang Pa-In, you can see the grounds makes cross-town travel in Manhattan the best service: there are definite ad- twice would be perversion...
...over sand-dunes...
...east of Crete as being unfathom- by, but all the guidebooks take the a diverse lot, the little library is an odd It has a raj, Jewel-in-the-Crown feel ably ancient—rose-red cities half as old same attitude as well...
...much younger than Albany, Dream...
...46 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR DECEMBER 1989...
...The Oriental also Thailand belongs to the short list of isn't...
...He was sitting there...
...Richard Brookhiser is a senior editor of came there in the bloom of their corners...
...The Thais parents, and the disease timebomb atop that Conrad favored lychee slings...
...But it seemed, to times by an expat journalist if he doing his job...
...Part of its fortune was and Indian Wars, obliterated the then- been sold into the business by their der...
...It best hotel in the world...
...They settled on Bangkok mense, so it sounds pretty grim to me...
...than a century, the Oriental has hosted the birthday girl's staff for the occasion, but because they wanted to...
...A intelligent non-Westerners c. 1910, to couldn't show us around, since we The other literary gents (and ladies) double staircase curves to the second have solved some of its (and their) of whom the Oriental brags, however, floor...
...As forecasted...
...new capital...
...tween India and Indochina, so that finally won the war, but they needed a which they are sitting must be im- Others—Barbara Cartland: pink cham- rival empires cancelled each other out...
...Pots of stately bamboo sit in the other problems along the way...
...Bangkok about sex than we are, the line goes, so Myra Breckinridge...
...Do we really know, for instance, due to the fact that it lay midway be-capital of Siam, Ayutthaya...
...Chulalongkorn once lost a wife be assumed that everyone who goes to first, Joseph Conrad, though there is because when the barge she was riding Bangkok also goes there is mysterious some sleight of hand in the Conrad con- on sank, none of her subjects could to me, for I would think there were bet- nection, for while he did stay at the rr o tell you the truth, the best thing touch her royal person, even to pull her ter reasons to cross the Pacific Ocean Oriental in 1888, he checked in as a I about the Authors' Lounge is to safety...
...I south to witness an eclipse he had remain are the color of India ink...
...That with ferries, plump rice barges, and hower Administration, and it tasted like his court to a malarial island in the time is gone for good...
...He died after taking criss-crossed by bucolic canals...
...to James Michener, and called a Jade the back-to-back reigns of two enervania...
...There rr he Oriental has a prime location, came in one of those vivid colors, both the musical/movie and the book was a time, not too long ago, when 1 on the bank of the Chao Phyaya whose secret I thought had been lost on which it was based to be condeBangkok was the "Venice of the East," river, the main aquatic drag, bustling with the Thunderbirds of the Eisen- scending slanders...
...If you motorized three-wheelers called tuk- tails...
...blue curacao, and creme de bananes...
...For as time, that kind of thing...
...When ary, just like an Italian garden...
...His successor, ChulalongResidents go to and fro by bus, car, and free-swiveling driveshafts like angry Voltaire said when invited to a second korn, is the one in the topper...
...Why it should most important writerly guest was the sion of Chopin's Nocturne in E flat...
...I tried one Another part was that the heyday of in the 1780s, which makes it about the I'd rather cool off at the Authors' of these offerings, which was assigned European colonizing coincided with same age as Wilkes-Barre, Pennsyl- Lounge of the Oriental Hotel...
...It became Yul Brynner (Thais consider It's as grim as those places too...
...And yet still, as we would say, gathering materi- white—white stone walls and balus- toward problems of its own—World not only were my wife and I asked four al, or, as he probably would have said, trades, white wooden gingerbread, War I, for instance...
...Well, the girls serves drinks which it bills as its places on earth that were never owned Burmese, about the time of the French are teenagers from the north who have authors' favorites...
...The Authors' Lounge tea things...
...They question, and say that I took no passed through...
...There was also a pianist in wanted to because the West struck breathers in Patpong, which is Bang- is named in honor of the writers...
...It came into existence because the the scene isn't so grim...
...pagne—have a ring of truth...
...The black tie, performing an E-Z-2 Play ver- them as being, in certain respects, betkok's red-light district...
...white wicker tables and chairs...
...The only good thing is founded on the avoidance of un- I was there, the Oriental was celebrating So the nineteenth-century Thais borabout the hub-bub is that it forces you pleasantness...
...decorated with pseudo-classical statuin rush hour seem like rodding a jeep vantages to visiting a culture which You can also get afternoon tea...
...On the way into the lounge, the pictures of Thai royalty of the last in the tropics in soothing surroundings the New York Observer...
...propellers buzzing at the end of long drank it, but I didn't order another...
...The traffic is simply hellish...
...The prevailing color is rulers could be touched was heading with razor blades and fruit...
...the one hundredth birthday of the Savoy rowed this and that from the Western to take your sightseeing at a civilized As the premier hotel in town for more of London, and it had imported two of world, not because they were forced to, pace, with frequent breathers...
...Thais are freer selection, Of Human Bondage jostling to it, but that's not quite right...
Vol. 22 • December 1989 • No. 12
