Ghost Town

My day started with a drive to Bangkok to visit Bumrungrad International Hospital. This is without a doubt in my mind the best hospital I have ever seen, been in as a patient or visited. It is more like a fine hotel and the care is incredibly good. The service and especially the prices are better than anywhere I have ever been. Today I had a consultation. I am going to live, Lord willing, and that's the end of the mornings activities.

For the last 4 years, I have looked across the Bangkok horizon and seen a set of sky scrapers that I have always wanted to see up close. During the Asian financial crunch back in the late 90's, many investors lost everything and many gigantic building projects were halted in mid-stride. This part of Bangkok was one of these places. This was a planned community with dozens of large office buildings and about 15 high rise condos that would have been very up scale if they had been finished and sold. Five of the high rises are just the hollow shells and the rest were at least finished and a few condos inside of them were sold, but for the most part, most of the apartments are empty. There are a few dozen occupied in each high-rise and the rest are just sitting there deteriorating. It is near a beautiful, small lake and park. It was one of the weirdest things I have ever seen. A few people live there, but for the most part it is a ghost town within a city. Kinda creepy. That section does seem to be slowly coming back. A few of the bottom floors of the big office buildings contain small businesses and shops, and last year a new huge sports and events center opened up not too far from this place. There was even a big power plant that was built to service this place that is closed down and all the offices abandoned.

Bangkok is a huge and very modern city. It is not some Asian backwater dump. It has everything that you could find in a major city in the US. Big, upscale malls, shopping centers, museums, art galleries and everything else you can think of, including an outdoor drive-thru zoo, and an nice aquarium, many theaters, restaurants, recreation places, etc. I like to visit here.