Bangkok Colors: White.

Sitting on the subway one afternoon, my eyes passed over three ladies dressed from head-to-heel in white. At first, I took them as three Buddhist nuns, with shaved heads and austere white robes. With a bit of surprise, I realized that only the first two were nuns: the third was a lavishly styled Hi-So woman, wearing a white silk suit, a massive white purse, and glamorously oversized white glasses. Ordinarily, white isn't a color I connect with Thailand (where every day of the week has its own color), or Bangkok (where pollution and pastel-paint coat every building). But upon looking back on these three women, I realized the degree to which white reflects two disparate sides of the Thai capital. White is a color of purity and austerity, but it's also a color of luxury and refinement. It's visible in the folded lotus buds at a shrine, or the porcelain tea sets of an elegant cafe; it shines in the hallowed walls of a grand Buddhist temple, and in the columns of the Erawan's temple to commerce.

Bangkok Colors: Blue-green

While not really a single color on its own, this family of hues reflect Bangkok's aquatic nature. The faded aqua doors and chipped sea-foam shutters of old houses are revealing of Bangkok's past, when the city was originally aquatic, and navigated by swampy canals. And while perhaps more commuters now take the bus or the skytrain than the river ferries or khlong boats, this past is practically relived during the rainy season, when the sois and highways flood with rainwater.

Bangkok Colors: Gold

On Monday mornings, gold becomes the color of the Bangkok as the sidewalks crowd with the yellow polo shirts of loyal Royalists, showing their support for the king. If there were any color that defines the contrasts of Bangkok's urban culture, it might be gold. It is the shade of tropical heat, and of rapid commercial development. It is the hue of devotion: to king, to god, to money, and to food. It glints in towering business complexes and ornate temple spires, and it glistens on ripe mangos and in sizzling phad thai noodles.

Bangkok Colors: Pink

Though I'm not generally a huge fan of pink, I chose it as the first color for my Bangkok Color series because it says so much about the city. Pink is the color of plastic ambition, of taxi traffic and neon fashion accessories. But it isn't all shallow: it's the color of faithful devotion, in bottles of Strawberry Fanta and pale lotus blooms left at spirit house altars.