Baiyoke Tower II

This guide to Baiyoke Tower II in Bangkok sets its story in the summer of 1997, as the baht collapses and the Asian financial crisis halts construction cranes across the city, while one tower in the Pratunam garment district keeps climbing. It follows the textile family who owned both the tower and the wholesale market below it, and their refusal to stop building through the ruins around them. Listen for how the surrounding streets of fabric stalls and tailors haggling at dawn shaped the neighbourhood the tower rose above.