Actually Bangkok and a fairly large central region (Central and East on the map) is not very poor - its per capita GDP is not far from the Taiwan/Singapore level.
Oh please, GDP per capita is no way to measure poverty. Bangkok has a certain amount of very, very rich people and sucks in most of the wealth from the rest of the country without giving much back in return.Of course, that is the function of all capitalist economic centres, Al. In fairness though, a great deal of the countries GDP is also
produced in Bangkok.
Yes, it is a third world metropolis, though far, far less bad than places such as Jakarta, Manila, Mexico City, Sao Paulo, and of course any African city. One reason for this is that it really isn't so big - only about eight million - it isn't quite as poor as some others, and of course the culture here does tend to be a bit less violent than in Latin America or Africa.
Anyway, you'll get no argument from me that inequality is quite bad here, Al, but it really isn't any worse than anywhere else in the third world, and is certainly on a par with the USA. The average worker here certainly does get enough to scrape by, just about like anywhere else. The interesting thing about Bangkok 'slums' is that they are more like slums in the US - just a lot of poor looking buildings - not actual shantytowns such as in the really desperate third world. Shantytowns here are only a very small proportion of the working class housing.