Whit Hot Insight Bangkok

    

   Sprawling and steamy Bangkok may have reinvented itself into an outpost of the hip,b but its current guise is yet another stage in a city that is forever shifting, and always adapting to trend and outside influences

    Observing the city today from the air-corditioned comfort of the elevated Skytrain, the Bangkok of the 1990s - ridden with choking smog, into distant memery. Most of the gleaming glass and steel towers are in place, the infamous traffic snarls are less and steel tower are in place, the infamous traffic smarls are less pervasive thanks to the Skytrain and a gleaming new underground metro line, and the pollution is noticeably liss smothering. The touts at Patpong are still around (Some things don't change) and the steamy heat still socks you in the face if you visit in muggy April. But with the economy back on track and a firm focus on the future, Bangkok is fast making a name for iself as Asia's new metropolis of cool.

    With hio hotels like the Metropolitan and Sukhothai and a clutch of uber cool nightlife spots led by the white hot Bed Supperclub and modish Q Bar, Bangkok is a hot new destination of the 21st century. The dining scene too, hasn't lagged far behind. Stylishly minimalist coffee clubs like Grey-hound have become de rigueur with the city's fashionable set, and wait till you try Thai Food within the rarefied atmosphere of Mahanaga, which mixes North African, Thai and Indian design accents to startling effects.

      The dreadlocked backpacker crowd still gathers at Thanon Khao San with its hodge-podge jumble of cheap eateries and tawdry souvenir shops, and sleazy male tourists still make a beline for the raunchy sex clubs of Patpong and Nana Plaza, but these scenes are oh so last century. With its feet set firmly in the present, Bangkok hardly qualifies as an Asian backwater. The shopping, too, has gone up a notch in the design quotient. The traditional stuff that That artisans are so famous for are still there - silver jewellery, tribal handicrafts, pottery and the like - but young Thai designers are fast making a name for themselves with bold and contemporary disigns in clothing and fashion, accessories furniture and home decor.

      Thankfully, Insight Bangkok hasn't become too painfully hip. Many of the traditional markers are still there: the golden spires of Buddhist temples, saffronrobed monks with arms outstretched at dawn for offerings, and thewafting smells of food hawked by streetside stalls. The shift to urban life has changed much of Bangkok's sensibilities, but it's a rare Thai who doesn't seek out sanuk (or fun), whether dining at a chic French restaurant or haddled around a pavement table piled with Singha beer ant Thai street food.