By 1982, over two decades of national development planning and economic transformation had reinforced the administrative, economic and symbolic dominance of the capital over the nation as never before. The Thai administrative title of the BMA capital region Krung Thep Mahanakhon recalled the old royal name of the city, but notwithstanding the state sponsored historical evocation of the Rattanakosin precinct in these years, the city's significance was rooted in its status as a capital of a modern nation state and the focus of economic accumulation and social advance- ment. The landscape of the city itself was a register of the major forces and contradictions marking the uneven development of previous decades The burgeoning slums belied the dreams of technocrats to forge a uniformly modern social and economic space. The governor of Bangkok's affirma- tive proclamation obscured the more complex realities of the metropolis and the ways it was experienced by ordinary people. At around the same time, the writer Wanich Jarunggidanan exposed a different image of the city in his short-story 'muang luang' (the capital). set in a nangkok bus in the middle of a traffic jam, the story evokes the indifference of the crowded city a place of alienation, grief and loss. The main character bemoans his fraught urban existence as an office clerk, dreaming of the simple and happy village life he forsook so long ago in search of advance- ment in the city. In the climax of the story, a labourer from Isan (the north east) spontaneously breaks into a traditional folk song about romance and