#7.1 Bangkok

• Some unknown proportion of the world’s population has not yet used a sit-down toilet. Some subsection of that group appears to travel on Malaysian railways. [Sign inside toilet on the KL to Butterworth (Penang) sleeper train.]
• This year more people will watch Bollywood films than Hollywood films. [Maximum City.]
• Singapore was the inspiration for China’s current economic renaissance. In 1978 Deng Xioping visited the formerly backwards island. Seeing the level of development Deng concluded capitalism to be a superior system to communism. He returned home, and shortly afterwards unveiled the beginnings of China’s system of Special Economic Zones. [Article in the Bangkok Post]
• OK Computer will be 10 years old this summer.
  
  

• I once heard it said that Britain was the only country in which you could find an orderly queue of one. Yet, unlike the scrimmage of getting on a London tube, passengers on Bangkok’s SkyTrain monorail system queue single file when waiting to board a carriage. They then file on to the train in line, one by one. There are also large flat screen televisions, with sound, on all platforms to entertain you, while you queue.
• South Korean singer Rain is Asia’s biggest pop star.