It's Bangkok, Helen, but not as we know it

By AUDREY YOUNG, political editor

Helen Clark sweeps into the foyer of the hotel surrounded by about 10 officials and security staff.

She is on her way to the hotel of Mexican President Vicente Fox Quesada, one of four formal bilateral meetings she has had with other leaders.

No time to talk right now to the New Zealand press corp covering Bangkok for the Asia Pacific Economic Co-operation forum.

She has her own pressing deadline and that is to get that motorcade off on time.

As Aucklanders well remember from Apec host duties in 1999, everyone and everything stops for the convoys that hurtle through the streets with sirens and lights without the nuisance of traffic lights and other vehicles.

But there is a particular joy to being part of a motorcade in Bangkok. To understand it, one has to know what Bangkok is like on a bad day.

On a previous visit it took four hours to travel from the airport to my hotel in the central city in 30C plus heat.

Fortunately in this transfer from hell the van had air-conditioning. Unfortunately, it was so aggressive it had almost caused a case of freezing to death in Bangkok.

Half an hour of the journey was spent parked behind a stationary car until our driver realised it had no driver and moved into the next lane for another half an hour behind a so-called "moving" car.

So a 120km/h Apec motorcade with Helen Clark's half a dozen vehicles through the streets of Bangkok to President Fox Quesada's hotel in five minutes is nothing short of thrilling.

The empty motorways are more eerie. Helen Clark's convoy to visit Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra yesterday and Indonesian President Megawati Sukarnoputri the day before seemed to be driving through a ghost town. That is a pretty staggering achievement in a city of eight million people.

The Thais are said to be pretty accustomed to motorcades, having a Royal Family that habitually uses them.

During the Apec forum which ends today, Bangkok has been a criss-crossing web of motorcades as the 21 leaders pick and choose with whom they will have bilateral talks.

As Helen Clark and Mr Fox are speaking, Singapore's Goh Chok Tong and Hong Kong's Tung Chee Hwa arrive in the same hotel to meet other world leaders.

Helen Clark leaves Mr Fox for Madame Megawati. Mr Fox follows on the lifeless motorway soon afterwards for his own meeting with the Indonesians after "the New Zealands", as US President George W. Bush quaintly calls us.

But Mrs Megawati is running late and before long everyone is crushed up in a jam on the same floor of her hotel: New Zealands, Philippines, and Mexicans.

Bangkok as we know it.