The Quest for Bangkok

As Bangkok’s burlesque queen, I’m used to spectacle. I live for energy, theatre and peeling back the layers to find the truth. So, when I sat down with Richard Quest in the sprawling Ritz-Carlton Suite at The Ritz-Carlton, Bangkok, it felt less like an interview and more like a masterclass in performance – with a surprising amount of soul.

It’s not every day you meet a legend. Richard Quest, the face of CNN’s Quest Means Business and Quest's World of Wonder, is in town. As I began my introduction, he immediately jumped in, ‘When you say it like that, even I'm impressed. And I lived it. I mean, I think this is a very good and generous way of saying, he's old. He's been around and he knows where the bodies are buried.’

And just like that, we were off. He was in Bangkok on a 'potpourri' of projects, a classic high-speed Quest trip. ‘The reality is that when you're based in New York... you put together a lot of different projects,’ he explained. He was interviewing the CEO of Thai Airways, meeting officials and filming. It was, he quipped, very If Today is Tuesday, This Must be Belgium. ‘I always get a bit of a feeling, you know, today's Wednesday, this must be Bangkok.’

I mentioned it was 'winter' in Bangkok, and he looked at me, utterly bemused. ‘Really?’ he exclaimed, as the air-con blasted. ‘I'm sweating in places you don't want to know.’

This candour set the tone. While business was his pretext, his connection to Thailand is also deeply personal. ‘I had my honeymoon in Thailand,’ he revealed, a wide grin spreading. ‘It was during the pandemic. They had just launched the Phuket sandbox... and we were the only people there.’

He wasn't just telling a travel story. He was admiring the nation’s character. ‘Everybody else is crying into their green tea. Meanwhile, Thailand is thinking, "How can we actually get people here?"... It was the ingenuity. Right up the nostrils, all the way back to the sinuses. But it worked.’

That search for 'ingenuity' and 'essence' is what drives him as a filmmaker. He finds covering Thailand a unique challenge. ‘How do you get the essence of the place, and not just make it look like a cliche? Even the sing-song way people speak, and not make it sound like it's a parody? That is the real challenge.’

He then launched into a hilarious complaint about the limits of Thai cuisine in his own home. ‘How do you convince people it's more than a chicken pad Thai? I mean, if my husband orders a chicken pad Thai one more time... I keep trying to tell him to go further down the menu. Keep going, dear, keep going.’

This quest for the 'non-cliche' answer led him to a place I, as a performer, deeply appreciate: a pair of high heels.

‘That was the first show where I had worn heels,’ he confessed, recalling the World of Wonder episode. ‘I’ve always wondered, how do women walk in heels? And by the way, you're not just walking on a flat surface. You're navigating subway grates, stairs, cobblestones.’

He found an 'extraordinary drag artist', Pangina Heals, to teach him. ‘He would not let go of me. I could barely walk... he was terrified I was going to fall over and rick my ankle.’ He then caught himself, laughing. ‘But anyway, I have no idea, dear viewer, how we got onto that story! Which merely means that Jade,’ – he pointed at me – ‘is doing a superb job, because she's completely bewitched me to go down avenues I had no intention of going into.’

Bewitched? Perhaps. As a fellow theatrical soul, I just understood the assignment.

But just as I thought we were lost in anecdotes, the Quest Means Business brain clicked on. The magic of interviewing him is this whiplash-fast pivot. One minute, he’s in heels; the next, he’s delivering a razor-sharp analysis of the travel industry's 'dirty little secret.'

‘Sustainability, wellness, authenticity... how much is here to stay and how much is just greenwashing? Oh, it's both. It's absolutely both. And it's hypocrisy at all levels.’

He waved his hand, dismissing the 'do you change your towels' debate as child's play. The real issues, he argued, are far more complex. First, 'real sustainability.' He defines this not by offsets, but by the 'value chain' – ensuring tourism provides aspirational jobs that lift people out of poverty. ‘It means the person who starts as a room attendant... then becomes a manager, then the money flows.’ He told me he'd just seen a bag in his hotel room asking for 'lightly used items' for local distribution. ‘Never seen that before. That’s sustainability!’

The second, bigger problem? ‘Overtourism. The single biggest problem we face, but nobody’s got an answer.’

He painted a vivid picture of being in Dubrovnik when the first post-pandemic cruise ship – a 'massive bugger' – arrived. ‘Me, with my policy hat on, thinks, "Ooh, back to the bad old days." But then I looked at the street traders... these were the first people they'd seen in 18 months. Am I to deny them their business? There is no easy answer.’

He pointed to attempts to manage it, from Venice's tickets to Thailand’s own closure of Maya Bay. ‘But let's say you shut it down. Who's gonna still go there? The rich people.’

This is where, he feels, Thailand gets it right. He praised the nation’s shift, years ago, from the ‘numbers game’ to the ‘quality’ game. ‘But as the minister said to me, "We can't all be going after rich Australian tourists."’

The Thai solution, he declared, is 'brilliant' on two counts. First, inclusivity: ‘Thailand encourages at all levels. Let the backpacker come when they're 18 and stay in the hostels, and they'll come back when they're 40 and stay in the 5 stars. Because they’ve always wanted to stay in the 5 stars; they just couldn't afford it.’

And the real answer to overtourism? ‘Dispersing. That's the answer for Thailand. To disperse into those parts of the country that aren't as well visited yet.’

As a Bangkok resident, I had to ask him about our city being ranked second in the world by Time Out. He understood it immediately, nailing our beautiful contradiction in one perfect phrase: 'It's very, very liveable in an unliveable way... The traffic, the pollution, the sheer intensity of it. But once you've put that into the context of the place, it becomes liveable. People are very adaptable.’

This adaptability is a theme he prizes. The word 'reinvention' gets thrown around, but for Quest, it’s about a more fundamental, proactive drive. He told me the story of how he created his own job as the BBC's Wall Street correspondent.

‘I was only doing business and economics. The corporation didn't have a Wall Street correspondent. And so I came up with the idea,’ he explained. They liked it, but made it a staff job and advertised it. ‘I thought, "Oh, no, I’m really screwed." And I applied for it... When the guy told me I got it, he said, "Richard, we've given you the job. You weren't the best candidate. But you were the only one we thought would bully his way on air."’

He leaned in, the lesson still fresh. ‘That taught me huge amounts about our business... The best jobs are the ones you invent yourselves. Always.’

This philosophy, he argues, is the antidote to a world of endless, low-quality content. He scoffed at vloggers who believe 'it's all about just how much content creation you can do.’ He’s a champion of the deep-dive. ‘I'm on the bus, I flick through TikTok. But I'm on the treadmill in the gym for 30 minutes, I listen to a podcast... something meaningful.’

He recalled an interview with Playboy founder Hugh Hefner. ‘Hugh Hefner said to me once, "We only ever do an article on somebody if they guarantee us three hours."... Why? "Because it's only after a couple of hours that you're comfortable... and you let your guard down. And you start getting the real answers."’

As for his own future, he was surprisingly candid. ‘I’m 63. I could not sell water in the desert. I have no capacity for risk in business... I've always been an employee.’

I raised an eyebrow. An employee?

‘But I'm really good at... I know how to pull the levers of power in a company,’ he said, a sly glint in his eye. ‘I know to speak to that person because he's got budget... and move the money around fast enough so nobody really sees where it is. Suddenly, you're on the plane.’

All that matters, he insists, is the quality on screen. And after all these decades, he is still utterly in love with the process, especially the travel. He’s excited for a future of biometric check-ins and vastly improved internet, but the tech isn't the point.

The magic, for him, is the human element. His voice softened as he spoke.

‘When the plane takes off, there's just a wonderment at this magnificent machine,’ he mused. ‘And then you look around the aircraft... "Who's going to get married? Who's just got fired? Who's gone through a divorce? Who's going to bury somebody?"... Every aspect of human emotion is in that aluminium tube. And that plane is carrying the hopes, the dreams, the wishes, the sadnesses of us all.’

He paused. ‘That is why I am still in love with aviation after all these years. Admittedly, I prefer to be in 2A rather than 96F. But still.’

A former producer, he told me, once said: 'If you want to get Quest's attention, get him on a plane. A sort of zen-ness comes over me... I'm agreeable to most things.'

And that was my final impression: the world’s most energetic man, a human-sized exclamation point, is a man who finds his peace 30,000 feet above the very chaos he so loves to report on.

Catch the full Time Out Thailand Podcast episode with Richard Quest on YouTube.