Quiet Bangkok - Visual Pollution Increases

For decades we have seen huge billboards on roadsides in Hollywood films. Now we see them in Thailand too. The image shown above is now a typical sight, as another investor steals our skyscape and waits for customers to barrage us with commercial products. Slowly, people begin to protest as in the following letter from Chiangmai published recently in the Nation:

"....I wanted to draw attention to the many monstrous, huge billboard constructions that make Thaksinburi (formerly known as the Rose of the North) so ugly.

Even in the old city, inside the moat, there are huge billboards, advertising a certain brand of shampoo or whatever, just in front of a historic building. Also, right next to the National Cultural Museum, a monstrous, still-blank billboard dominates the compound. And there are a hundred more!

So anyway, the Chiang Mai Cultural Council must have noticed it. This billboard culture is in my opinion a consequence of Thaksinomics, which dictates that money is the only thing that counts and not environmental issues.

Try to watch from behind your taxi window, coming from the airport, the skyline of Bangkok. It is not possible anymore. The skyline has disappeared behind hundreds of these monstrosities!

There exist regulations about the size and place permitted for the construction of billboards, but here again corruption makes everything possible."