As I mentioned in the post we published a few weeks ago, we are in México and will be spending several months here for a mix of business and visits with family and friends.

Here I share with you my first impressions upon returning after a year and a half in Asia. Over the months we'll be here, I'll try to tell you what my country is like in general, and above all about the human dimension of it, which is what matters most to me.

Landing at Mexico City's Benito Juárez International Airport, you no longer feel like you've arrived in some thoroughly third-world country. My first outings along Paseo de la Reforma (one of the city's main avenues),

were genuinely pleasant, because the avenue is beautiful and the city's architecture is lovely. The Santa Fe district, which has grown without any planning whatsoever (like everything in my country), is modern but impractical. Traffic, as always, collapses into bottlenecks that choke any possibility of flow. But never mind that, because people keep buying more cars and, above all, more SUVs. SUVs confer enormous status, plus a "supposed security" of every conceivable kind. I genuinely cannot understand why the residents of Mexico City, the vast majority of whom are neither farmhands nor hikers nor adventurers, insist on lumbering around in these obstructive vehicles. There's no question about it: practicality will never be our strong suit.

Someone once told me that you need a large vehicle to fit all your complexes inside, and they may have had a point. These cars are usually occupied by a single passenger, everyone visibly harried and stressed, hunting for shortcuts to reach their destinations. Getting around this chaotic, beautiful city always takes hours, which is perhaps why people buy vehicles that have become extensions of the home. Children can watch TV, do homework, eat, change their clothes, and take care of whatever else they need without stopping and squandering the precious little time that people in this city have, not to mention the risk of being robbed if you stop in the wrong place at the wrong hour. Some of the billboards scattered all over the city advertising the Hummer (the one the Americans put up for commercial sale during these years of war, a vehicle that looks like a tank) read: "MIRROR, MIRROR, WHO'S THE BIGGEST OF ALL?" and "BIG FACE BEATS PRETTY FACE." This vehicle succeeded in very few countries, though here I suspect another factor is the streets riddled with potholes, speed bumps, and craters.

Coming from Thailand, it feels as if time has stopped here, and so has traffic. I'm not exaggerating, believe me, it doesn't move sometimes for half an hour or more. And yet there's always talk of new projects to keep building: bridges, tunnels, other alternatives for individual circulation, but no additional public transit whatsoever. In my country, only people who cannot afford a car (more than it might appear) travel by public transport.

Any reasonably prosperous family today must have an SUV. Not satisfied with the obstacles already embedded in the pavement to prevent anyone from gliding along comfortably, the people whose apparent job it is to make everything as bad as possible add more speed bumps every day. There are even speed bumps on steep inclines, which makes me think drivers never touch the brakes. My city keeps growing in chaos, but the good news is that people complain less and less. Many claim they avoid going out, though the sheer number of cars on the street doesn't quite support that story. Respect for traffic signals, painted lane markings, and police officers remains what it has always been, which is to say: nonexistent. Though a law just passed stating that if you're not polite to a police officer, you can be arrested.

That said, here in Santa Fe (a residential area of a certain standing), the buildings are mostly quite beautiful, if cold-feeling, and there appears to be absolutely no circulation plan in place for when the area is fully populated, meaning it will be yet another catastrophic infrastructure blunder. The city's poor infrastructure and the near-total absence of political or social will to address it are so obvious they're genuinely embarrassing.

We Mexico City residents have become very pragmatic. Across from the building where we're staying, there's a condominium complex that looks like it's hanging off the side of a mountain, and it was already there before we left. But now, on top of it (as if it were part of the same concept), there are large white spheres that don't look half bad from a distance, and my nephew (the one who lives in this complex) tells me they are spaces to deposit the ashes of your dearly departed. Remarkable. Now you can live, work, entertain yourself, commute, and die all within a few kilometers of each other, if you choose that practical option. The other day we went to the Zona Rosa, and it's so dirty and disheveled it's also a bit sad, though it's looked that way for a long time. The planters along the sidewalks have turned into trash cans; no one tends the plants, which is particularly jarring when you've just come from living in a country where living things in general, and plants in particular, are treated with such care. What I did love was seeing that my people are starting to speak up. Walking along that same sidewalk, a young man who looked like a waiter from one of the nearby restaurants was picking up garbage, and as we passed him we heard him say, quite clearly: "Filthy people, why can't they put their trash where it belongs!" It's a small thing, but maybe starting to say these things out loud is enough to nudge others into action. As if not caring for these plants and median strips weren't enough, in Santa Fe you'll find the offices of major corporations, many of them worth millions, that are supposedly contracted to maintain all of it. We also enjoyed stumbling upon Hamburgo Street, which appears to be the block where gay couples openly and freely declare their love and passion for one another. The unfortunate part was the contrast we encountered five minutes later, when we turned the corner onto Reforma. There was a young man dressed and painted entirely in canary yellow, presumably advertising some product. He seemed to be waiting for a taxi or a bus when a passing SUV carrying what appeared to be employees of some company pulled up and openly hurled insults at him for how he was dressed. That breed of macho who feels compelled to perform his "supposed masculinity" for everyone within earshot, just so none of us have the slightest doubt about it, makes me genuinely sick.

The most interesting place, where you find the true essence of México and its magnificent architecture (insofar as that's possible in a megalopolis like this), is the historic city center.

At the new museum recently opened by writer Carlos Monsiváis (the Museo del Estanquillo), dedicated to popular art, I read this phrase: "The landscape is the physical and symbolic majesty that, ideally, imparts lessons of harmony and coherence to disordered lives and chaotic governments, and to groups that can't even discipline their own disorder." ME.

For the backpackers among you, the ones who usually go looking for the real soul of a place, I recommend these three guesthouses right in the heart of the historic center.

Hotel Juárez, located at: Primer Callejón de la calle Cinco de Mayo #17.

Hotel Canadá at: Calle Cinco de Mayo #24. Both full of charm and thoroughly Mexican.

Hostel Amigo at Isabel La Católica #61. http://www.hostelamigo.com/

Sanuk (a Thai word for fun, for the joy of living lightly)