Krungthep Bridge across the Chao Phraya River in Bangkok (Thailand)

One night in Bangkok and the world's your oyster
The bars are temples but the pearls ain't free
You'll find a god in every golden cloister
And if you're lucky then the god's a she
I can feel an angel sliding up to me.

Lyrics of One Night in Bangkok

Murray Head

Krungthep Bridge over the Chao Phraya River in Bangkok (Thailand)

'There it was, spread largely on both banks… an expanse of brown houses of bamboo, of mats, of leaves, of a vegetable-matter style of architecture, sprung out of the brown soil on the banks of the muddy river. Here and there in the distance, above the crowded mob of low, brown roof ridges, towered great piles of masonry, King’s Palaces, temples, gorgeous and dilapidated, crumbling under the vertical sunlight, tremendous, overpowering, almost palpable, which seemed to enter one’s breast with the breath of one’s nostrils and soak into one’s limbs through every pore of one’s skin.’

Bangkok by Joseph Conrad

Bangkok Memorial Bridge across the Chao Phraya River in Bangkok (Thailand)

My driver points out and say, "Memorial Bridge." The way she raises her eyebrows tells me she thinks this is important information. It's a plain metal truss bridge. I can't imagene what it would be a memorial to. I smile and nod.

From the novel The Butterfly Trap

Dennis Jon

Drawing of Rama IX Bridge over the Chao Phraya river in Bangkok (Thailand)

"It is true, there are many bad people; there are more of them than in the past, but that is because there are more people, meaning the population has tripled; there must be three times more bad people."

Bhunidol Adulyadej (Rama IX)