My son George made a wonderful discovery at the age of four. With his sister Pimchanok, two, he found that it was possible to play outdoors. They made the most of the opportunity, afforded by a patch of gravel outside a car hire office somewhere in the concrete excesses of Charles de Gaulle airport. The gravel itself made an adequate toy, but it was the thrill of being out in the open - even under a leaden north European sky - that made all the difference.
Just six months earlier, George had played outdoors, hurling himself around a bouncy castle set up in the grounds of the British embassy in Bangkok. The occasion was the Ploenchit Fair, an annual charity event that draws such large crowds that every attraction is over-subscribed. So it was that George was allotted 10 minutes in the castle. He was out in two, vomiting violently, sweating profusely, unable to stand, shuddering and turning cold. Heat exhaustion, declared a nurse. And so a day of fun came to an early end. George's bouncy castle adventure had been cut short by heat, bad air and humidity.
We put him in our air-conditioned pick-up truck and took him to the air-conditioned haven of our home, mopped his brow with damp towels and considered, once more, the unfairness of life in the Big Durian.
And so to the mall. We called it church because we went there every Sunday. It offered nothing remotely spiritual. What it did have was a powerful air-conditioning system that created a patch of consumer heaven along the tourist drag and foreign ghetto that is Sukhumvit Road. It housed one of those padded assault courses so beloved of children. It also housed the restaurants and shops so beloved of grown-ups. When George was born, we told ourselves in smug if blissful ignorance that we would not inflict the mall upon him. Oh no, we were too smart for that. We would be far more creative and imaginative than those dullard parents who drag their kids around the mall for want of something else to do. On our drive to church we would pass park after park, all empty. Nobody goes out in the daytime.
My wife Pat and I loved living in Bangkok. We had many old friends and good jobs. We had a comfortable, large house, a garden that exploded into colour and generated an endless supply of mangoes, bananas, roseapples, pomegranates and custard apples. Bangkok is a great city, particularly for consenting adults - and that was the problem. It was all right for the adults, but not for the children.
Threats lie everywhere. A snakebite was a possibility, albeit a remote one. A malarial sting from a mosquito was slightly less unlikely, and one from a fire ant hurt like hell. But no threat was so obvious as that contained in the grey clouds that swirl and rise above the roaring roads of Bangkok. Two-stroke motorcycles spluttering burnt oil, 10-wheel trucks converting inferior, adulterated and cheap diesel into dense black clouds, and nice, shiny imported limos spewing out more fumes. George's playgroup was a mile from home as the kite flies, but the journey there could take as long as an hour. That meant his lungs were being exposed to foul air in traffic for two hours every day, in addition to the hours of moderately foul air at home and at school. Had we stayed in the country, we would have sent him to one of two international primary schools, both on the extreme outskirts of the city, where the air is moderately awful and property prices significantly lower. If we didn't move closer to his school, that would have meant up to four hours a day in choking traffic.
The Chao Phraya river, which winds its way through the city and out into the Gulf of Siam, is classified by the United Nations as being fit only for navigation. To steal from Tom Lehrer, Bangkok is fine, so long as you don't drink the water and don't breathe the air. Foul water backs up from the sewers and rests on the surface, taking in more organic and chemical waste. In prolonged dry periods, the water disappears, leaving a fine dust containing a myriad of allergens that gets disturbed and thrown into the air by traffic and slips unseen and unfelt into the lungs.
In the fertile climes of the far east, if you throw a seed out of the window, a plant will grow. So it is with the bugs that caused us to take George or Pim to hospital at least once a month with allergies that caused irritation to the eyes and nose, or with the vicious effects of a tropical common cold. This usually meant not just a runny nose, but a high fever accompanied by aches and pains. The sense of helplessness that any parent experiences when their child is sick is exacerbated by the severity of the symptoms, and there is a temptation in Bangkok, where antibiotics can be bought over the counter, to seek relief in those pills. Clever marketing men from the pharmaceuticals industry, pharmacists happy to oblige, and a public with a strong belief in western medicine have turned Bangkok into a breeding ground for bugs with the power to resist the best that modern medicine can throw at them.
Leaving Bangkok, which had been home for 13 of the past 20 years, was a painful experience. The great city had been kind to me, and London was a harsh and, in many ways, a poor substitute. But after more than a year in Britain, the children could not be happier or healthier. With the exception of one incident resulting from gross parental negligence (by me), they have seen the doctor only when they have been called to the surgery for routine examinations or jabs.
Play under the sky might not be the novelty it was at Charles de Gaulle, but play it is. It might be reasonable to suggest that millions of children have grown up in Bangkok without any health worries and that, perhaps, the picture painted here is a little bleak. But we had the chance to live somewhere else and that is what we did. We called it the tyranny of choice.
