“Although [Asian City I] is afflicted with all the problems of an overdeveloped metropolis in an underdeveloped country​—poverty, crime, pollution—​it has begun to establish itself as one of the capital cities of the 21st century.”

Of City I, Time says: “Once seen romantically by the West as the drowsy, dreamy capital of old Siam, a ‘Venice of the East,’ today’s quicksilver city of angels and golden temples is Asia’s latest boomtown.” Even its angels and its temples have failed to prevent Bangkok, Thailand, from becoming, at least for a time, “the world capital of the sex trade.”